Caring for the Helpless

First published in The Daily Sentinel on Friday, April 25, 2008

Early Monday morning, our family was startled awake by barking dogs. Not barking in the distance, they were barking right below our house. My son came to my bedroom and said that he saw three big dogs attacking a cat from his bedroom window. The cat was black-and-white. We have a black-and-white cat.

I quickly threw on some pants and shoes and ran outside to investigate. What I saw made my heart leap to my throat. Three large dogs – each one easily standing three-feet tall at the shoulder – surrounded a small cat. The dogs were barking and growling as they circled the helpless feline. Each took turns at mauling the kitty. The cat laid motionless on the ground, not even trying to put up a defense.

I clapped my hands together and yelled at the dogs at the top of my voice as I rushed down the hill. Instantly, the aggressors lost their aggressiveness, and they scattered in three directions away from their victim.

I reached the cat and discovered it was not black-and-white; instead, it was gray-and-white. That was even worse. We also had a gray-and-white: Peter. He was our youngest kitty, brought home two years ago by my daughter after she discovered him wandering along Main Street as a helpless kitten.

At the time, we already had three other cats. I considered our household to be at kitty-capacity. The felines agreed with me. They hissed at the newcomer, arching their backs and ruffling their tails to let us and this bedraggled, eye-infected, flea-bitten varmint know that they wanted nothing to do with him.

The human contingent of the house thought otherwise. Instead of a grungy, ugly nuisance, they saw a beautiful, yet helpless creature who was struggling for life. I capitulated on two conditions: 1) I got naming rights for this cat, and 2) when my daughter was ready to get a home of her own, the cat was to go with her unless it had become completely attached to the other cats.

With slate gray and white fur, this little cat, when all curled up, looked to me like a fuzzy rock. So I decided to call him “Peter,” which is the Greek word for rock. It’s the name that Jesus gave to Simon in the New Testament. If the name worked for him, then it should work for this cat. And it did. Peter became a valued and loved member of our family. Even the other cats bonded with him (so much for sending him away with my daughter in a few more years).

But now, Peter is lying on his side - glassy-eyed and more pathetic than he had ever been as a kitten. He was panting and drooling, in shock. His fur was matted and soiled; he stank of urine, feces and dog saliva. Amazingly, I found little blood. “Oh, Peter!” I cried, “I am so sorry this happened to you!”

I called for my wife to come down with towels. We wrapped poor Peter carefully and brought him inside. As soon as the local vet clinic opened, we took him to be examined. As I write this, Peter is still there – internal injuries were much worse than external ones.

The irony of this experience is that Peter is the one cat in our family who really didn’t care to go outside. I’m not even sure why he was out that night. But there he was when other people’s pets transformed from loving companions (“Man’s best friend”) into vicious beasts – mauling one who was smaller and defenseless against their raging bullying.

It’s so easy to blame oneself for the harm inflicted on another. I blame myself for not ensuring Peter was in the house before going to bed. But when the harm isn’t so close – when it’s not your own beloved pet or family member – it’s even easier to ignore that the harm is happening at all. I realized that later this week listening to a report about violence in The Congo, Africa.

A nine-year-old girl was interviewed by reporters. She told about the night four armed men rushed into her family’s home demanding money and food. Her mother was in a chair, nursing her baby brother. Her father was sitting next to his wife. The family had no money and very little food. So the gunmen attacked like vicious dogs – killing the mother and her infant in ways that I will not detail here. The nine-year-old daughter tried to run away and one of the men slashed her leg with a machete – and left her there to bleed to death. Her four-year-old brother came in from the bedroom and was shot in the head. The father was taken outside, beaten and tied upside down to a tree. The men built a fire under the father’s head and left him to die from burns or smoke inhalation – whichever got to him first.

My heart returned to my throat as I heard that story. How could we be so cruel? What is it in human beings that can make us as savage as the dogs who attacked my poor cat? And what are we who hate this cruel behavior doing about it?

The Peter in the Bible tried violence in response to a bad situation. When Judas betrayed Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, leading Roman soldiers and Jewish Temple guards to arrest him, Peter responded by swinging his sword at one of the arrestors. He sliced off the man’s ear. In such a tense moment, the situation could have easily turned into a bloodbath. But Jesus stopped the violence with words:

"Put your sword back in its place," Jesus said to him, "for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” (Matt 26:52)

All the violence in this world – humans against humans and animals against animals – is the byproduct of our fundamental condition: we are sinners. Will you join me in confessing our violent behaviors and repenting of them? Will you join me in putting away our swords and instead focus on caring for the helpless? If swords and weapons must be used, let us use them for defense rather than aggression – and let us pray that God will help us to see the difference!