the spiritual application of kitty litter

So, yesterday I was cleaning out the litterboxes and having a hard time of it because Merry wouldn't just leave me to it.

Merry, if you don't already know, is the kitten we (read: I, against the husband's better judgment) rescued from the dim, despairing reaches of our parking lot in June. We estimate that she is now 4-5 months old -- and, as I've described elsewhere, she is a tiny automaton with fur, powered by a boundless energy source and stuck in a redundant play-eat-sleep loop.

Pippin, our five-year-old tabby, remains unimpressed with the new addition, but they both seem to enjoy chasing each other.

Anyway, as soon as I started cleaning out the litterboxes yesterday, up bounded the little automaton to investigate what I was about. As I scooped unmentionable stinkiness into a plastic trash bag, she craned her neck over the edge of one litterbox to sniff.

"I'm working here," I told her.

Ignoring me in all-too-familiar cat fashion, Merry came closer and stuck her head into the sack containing the stinkiness.

"That won't smell good," I warned.

Unconcerned, Merry investigated the contents another moment or two.

"I really don't need your help," I said.

Merry withdrew her head from the sack, clambered into the larger of the two litterboxes, and promptly pooped in it.

"I am trying to work here!!!"

But, alas, my protests were for naught. The kitten finished her toilet, made a few half-hearted scratches that didn't half cover up the mess, and raced away to find the older kitty and torment her with some game or other.

Leaving me, of course, with a fresh mess to clean up.

And that's when I thought, "This must be how God feels."

Not that I'm setting myself up as God over my cats. (Anyone who knows cats and/or God knows what a laughable prospect that would be.) I'm more like the kitten. Actually, I think we're all more like the kitten.

God cares for us. He cuddles us and feeds us and gives us a place to sleep. He talks to us and listens to us when we cry. He puts special things into our lives simply for the sheer joy of seeing us happy. He loves watching us be what we're created to be.

And he cleans up our messes all the time.

And more often than not, we humans get in his way while he's doing it.

We don't leave well enough alone. We make a mess of our lives -- and maybe we ask him to help clean it up; maybe we don't. Either way, God steps in to do what's necessary to clean up the mess...

...but we don't trust him to do it. We come back to it to see what he's doing with it. We poke and nudge and prod: Are you doing this right? We try to cover it up, even though there's really no hiding it. We stick our noses into what he's already cleaned up -- even as he tells us he doesn't need our help and warns us that we probably don't want to smell this.

And sometimes, instead of letting him finish his work, we clamber back into the situation and mess it up all over again.

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Pippin, our adult cat, also gets curious when I clean out the litterboxes. She watches me carry the plastic sack to the kitty cubby; she might even jump up into the cubby so as to get a closer look. But she sits back, watching. She doesn't stick her nose into what I've already cleaned, and she certainly doesn't climb into the box to do business in it while I'm trying to work. She knows that if she just lets me finish, she'll have a nice, fresh box and won't have to smell messes again for awhile.

That, of course, is where the effectiveness of the metaphor ends: A litterbox is *meant* to be messed up over and over again. A human life, however, is not designed for continual ruin. God wants to clean up our lives for us -- and then be there to help us keep them clean.

I want to mature so I can learn to sit back and let him do it.