“A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal”   Proverbs 12:10 

     I have a cat named Patches.  She is about one and half years old.  I don’t know exactly how old she is because Patches was abandoned.  She found us   She walked in our house one day and decided to live here. She had kittens in our house on my mom’s bed next to my dad! She had four but we couldn’t find homes for all of them so we kept three.    We already had a cat before she came in so now we have five cats. 

     Patches almost died this week.

     This is how it happened.  I was half asleep in bed. (I like to sleep in late.) Then I heard someone say, “Patches got hit by a car!” I thought it was a dream.  Then my younger sisters woke me up and said, “Patches got hit by a car!” 

     I ran out to the living room and I started to cry.  Then my sister said, “Patches is still alive.”  I started to get up to go out the door and my sister said, “Stop! You can’t go out there. Mom won’t let you out!” 

     “What happened?” I asked.

     “Dad found her on the street” she said.

     “Daddy picked her up. He’s holding her” my other sister said.

     Then Mommy came inside.  She didn’t say anything.  A few seconds later she was going back outside with a large plastic tub that had a blanket inside.  We were all crying.  My littlest sister was crying like Patches was dead. 

      I said, “She’s still alive. Let’s pray” and so I prayed.  “Dear Jesus, please help Patches to survive.”  Then I remembered a story about another cat that had been hit by a car that survived because the family prayed with faith.  So at the end of my prayer I said, “Thank you for healing her. Amen” I wasn’t so certain though.

     Then my little sister Annie prayed.  “Dear Jesus please be with Patches.  Amen.”

     Then I told her, “Annie we have to pray with faith.”

     She said, “Okay”

     We kept on praying.  This made me feel like she was going to get better after saying, “Thank you for healing her”

     Then Mommy came inside.  She was holding the plastic tub with Patches inside of it.  Daddy was following her. He had blood on his shirt.  He looked like he wanted to cry.  My mom set the container on the floor.  We all looked at Patches.  I had lost other cats by being hit a car but I was little so I wasn’t too sad.  Of course I was sad but I got over it more and I didn’t see them dying.  

     When I saw Patches it was terrible.  I tried to hold back my tears.  My sisters started wailing.  With that I shed a few tears.  My mom said, “We need to stay calm for Patches.  She isn’t dead yet.  You need to be strong for her.”  They calmed down a little.  After a while Dad said the same thing.

    Then we all got in a circle around her and prayed for her.  After we prayed for her, I had an idea.  I thought, “What if we take Patches to the vet?” I told everyone that. 

    My mom said, “They’ll probably just say to put her down.” 

    But I said, “Let’s go anyway”

    My mom said, “Go put on your shoes if you’re coming with me.”

    So we all got our shoes on and threw on our jackets even though I was still wearing my pajamas.

    We ran out the door and just ran to the car.  We tried to help mom get Patches in.  We buckled our seatbelts really quick.  My sisters and I were leaning forward in our seatbelts to make the car go faster.  It did go pretty fast when we were on the freeway. 

     We got there and rushed Patches in.  We had called ahead so they would know we were coming.  They rushed us in a room.  About 5 seconds later, the vet came in.  We had never been there before so my mom had to fill out papers.  It was such an emergency that the vet checked Patches while my mom was filling out the paper.

     Patches was very calm.  They covered her with a blanket to keep her warm.  The vet said it didn’t look like she had any broken bones.  That was a relief.  But then she said that she had hurt her head which meant that she could die.  That was not a relief.  She had a brain injury.  They said her brain could swell any time in the next two days.  If it did she would die.  It was so sad.  They said it was going to take a lot of money.  Mommy said it was okay because there was a chance she could get better. 

     My dad had to go to work so he didn’t drive to the pet hospital with us.  He drove over from his work.  He told them he had an emergency and my mom had left her phone at home.  He brought the phone with him and he saw Patch.  We told him what the vet said and he said we could let them take care of her.  We had to leave her there.  They said they would call us at 12:00 to let us know how she was doing.

      So we left. 

      When we got home we decided that we were going to pray together every hour for her.  And we did. 

      At 11:30 the vet called.  I looked at the clock. It wasn’t 12:00.  Then I got worried.  Then my mom left the room to talk to vet which made me more scared.  It made my sisters scared too.  We started to pray.  It seemed like forever before my mom came back.  When she did, she had tears coming down her cheeks.  I said, “Are those happy tears or sad tears?” 

      “Tears of relief”, she said

I asked, “What happened?”

     “The vet said that Patches is doing remarkably well in a very short amount of time. ”

I was so happy, I wanted to shout for joy! But she wasn’t better yet. 

     Later in the day Mom called to see if we could go and visit her.  Then mom left the room and made us all scared that something bad had happed.  We started praying again. 

     Then mom came back into the room and we asked, “Is she okay?” 

     “Yes! The vet said that she’s doing great.  She’s purring and purring and rubbing them with her head.  We can go pick her up at 5:00”

     We were so happy. We weren’t just going to get to see her, we were going to pick her up!

     When we got to the vet we were in the waiting room for a long time.  Daddy surprised us by showing up.  He was out of work. Then they called us in.  I thought, “Brace yourself.  Patches isn’t going to look very nice.  She’s going to have IV’s and all kinds of things in her.” 

     But when I got in there she surprised me.  She just had one IV and she didn’t have any blood on her like this morning.  She was very happy to see us.  She started purring louder.  

    The vet said that the car hit her on the left side of her head.  She accidently bit down on her tongue when the car hit her and her tongue was all torn up, but it would be okay.  She broke a tooth and cracked her skull in two places.  They had to do surgery on her chin because the skin torn away from her jaw when she was hit.  They sent us home with medicine for her pain.  The vet said we had to watch her through the night because she could still die.

    She purred all the way home.  The night she came home my sisters and I all had nightmares that she had died, but the next day she did even better. We took her back to the vet and they took out her IV.  

     This Sabbath morning I woke up feeling relief that her brain wouldn’t swell anymore.  I petted her and I wanted to scream with happiness.  She acts like it never happened to her.  I thank God that she’s okay.  It’s the power of prayer that she got better. 

     She’s a miracle cat.