In July of 2016, I was called to go to Virginia as my brother was very sick and was needed to there with him. My wife was to remain home and take care of things here. After about a week, my brother was improving, so I decided to return home.

On the return trip, I got a call from my wife, and she began telling me about a small black kitten that had appeared on our patio one morning. The kitten was very small and looked very weak and frail like someone had abandoned it. The wife decided for the time to feed the kitten to make sure nothing happened to it. This went on for about a week, feeding and caring for the kitten.

When the wife shared with her friend how she was feeding the kitten and caring for her, her friend said this kitten is now yours. So by giving her all this attention, the kitty was to grow and stay day after day becoming a big part of her life. The strangest part about all of this was that she was allergic to cats and could not be around them.

My wife and I had often talked if we were to get a pet it would be a dog. But God had a way of taking care of our needs and not our wants. There were things over the years in our life that needed to be healed: my wife's allergies, our marriage, and growing together. My ability to be open and feel emotion as I should. There was something that happened as a child that stole my self-worth and being able to feel the ability to cry when sadness happened. This little creation of God had come into our lives to change all of that. When we first took her with us, we just called her Kitty.

After six months, we wanted to take Kitty to the vet, and we did not know if she was a male or female. Once we discovered her gender, we decided to name her Miss Kitty. From that day on, she took over our home and our lives. Miss Kitty would do things that would keep us spellbound, and seeing her romping through our home gave us such peace. My wife no longer had problems with allergies. We found ourselves sitting together watching her, and it brought conversation and to be more open to each other.

After a year and half, Miss Kitty got out and strayed to our neighbor's yard. They have two large dogs. This was very unusual because she never went near that side of the fence or entered their yard. The dogs got her, and the damage was fatal.

After getting her to the vet, we were told that we had lost her because of severe damage to her skin being pulled from her body. As I said earlier, I hadn't felt any emotion like this in a long time. This broke me as something that I had never felt before. Tears were flowing, and I just couldn't talk for the flow of emotion. This was my healing from God. It was very painful losing Miss Kitty, but we can see this was our lives being mended and repaired for future use in God's work.

--Sherman B. Bishop

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