Sarge’s Story

It was watching Sarge coming up out of the basement that taught me my latest lesson in living life outside the box. Sarge is one of our two cats, a big mutt with some coon cat in him. I like him, but Annie calls him a "man's cat" and I suppose it's true, depending on how you look at it. He's not all that graceful and not all that affectionate; he'd rather sleep in the middle of a bare floor than curl up in the folds of the sweater you just took off. And while I don't want to say that he's kind of slow, it happens that things sometimes escape him. I know that feeling.

Standing next to the fridge, facing the basement door, I watched as Sarge tried to get through the doorway. The door can swing wide open into the kitchen, but right now it was almost closed, with a gap of less than two inches showing. He couldn't squeeze through, although he tried to, poking his nose into the opening and fishing tentatively with a paw, unaware or having forgotten that the door would swing out of his way with just the slightest push.

Only when I saw that he was going to slink back down to the basement in defeat did I go over and open the door for him. You can overdo this drawing of conclusions from events in the lives of housecats. But the episode did remind me of how the difficult things in our lives sometimes rule how we live and work. See, it's a big gigantic wall there, and only a narrow gap to squeeze through! I can't do it, I'll never make it! When all you have to do is push a little, and what seems for sure like an immoveable wall drops away, and the light pours through.