Living Side By Side In Peace

By John Kubicek

I've known that my dog Moochie was very lonely when I went to work. I had really been considering getting another dog, hopefully one at the local kennel that had been abandoned... and preferably a yellow lab.

While God answers our prayers, He sometimes gives us something that may be a litlle different than we were asking for. Instead, I got ... a kitten!

I was at work Sunday night, and out of nowhere, here comes this cute little kitten, probably a month old, and walks right up to me. I found out from co-workers that this kitten had been around for a few days.

My immediate feeling was that I wanted to adopt this poor lost kitty. I had concerns, though, because I have a pretty good sized dog, Moochie, and I didn't want to endanger that poor little lost and homeless kitty. I decided to take on the risk, and bring the kitty home, and see if Moochie would be able to tolerate a cat in the house.

I was amazed. Moochie and the kitty took to each other right off the bat. It was truly love at first sight!

I've had three dogs in the last 18 years. I've never raised a cat before. But I am definitely up for this. While I've never had the experience of raising a cat, I think I'll do just fine. I seem to have this infinite love for animals, kind of like Ellie Mae of the Beverly Hillbillies. To me, my pets are part of the family.

This new member of the family has been named: Pearse (sounds like "pierce"). I hope that name isn't too gender-specific, because at this time, I am not even sure if Pearse is a male or female. Yes, there is a real gender identity crisis going on here. A friend at work thought it was a male, but I'm not so sure now. When Pearse goes to meet the vet on Saturday morning for an initial check up, I'll then know for sure, and there won't be any more gender identity issues.

What has happened in the last two days has been a very welcome break for me. This precious little kitty has taken my mind off of all the problems of the world at least for a day or two. I am pretty sure that I was in need of a time-out. It was getting difficult to decide what to write about these days, there is so much happening. And I will admit, I was beginning to ask myself some thought-provoking questions: Just how much was there that I could opine on that you haven't already read somewhere else? Was it important whether or not it was about a topic that attracted a lot of reader interest? Or, should I just continue writing about some of the issues that aren't the topics of the day, and not worry about whether or not those columns are popular and draw more readers?

There was something that came out of those questions that ended up being quite profound. Perhaps writing blogs won't be what I'll be able to do for the rest of my life as a career choice in order to produce a life-sustaining income. (And don't forget, I now have one more mouth to feed!) It would be great if I was able to get to that point, but that seemed to be the whole problem. Putting that desire to write blogs for an income - above everything else - became very stressful. Writing blogs about political issues, especially from a Conservative view point, made it even more difficult, because that guaranteed that there would be detractors to whatever I would post. Not to mention, there is always the possibility that at some point in the near future, there will be an attempt to silence the Conservatives. (That has already started.)

And here I am today, writing about the rescue of a lost kitty, which I believe suffered the indignity of being dumped off out in the rural area, as an unwanted animal. It was my first inclination that made me want to adopt little Pearse. He or she really needed to feel loved.

After just two days of witnessing the love develop between Pearse and Moochie and myself, and seeing a dog and a cat get along so well, it gave me some hope for us people, too. I just wonder how good things could be if we learned from the dog and cat living side by side in love, peace and harmony.

I just wonder how many abortions could be averted if women knew that there are people out here that would be willing to adopt and give that child loving parents and siblings.

This story ended up being a lot more important than I thought it would be. Hey, I'm just sayin'...