Here's Oliver!

Oliver is my therapy cat. Let me tell you how I met him -

I was walking out back of the center when I noticed this cat walking up on the wall towards me. He was mostly of the vanilla persuasion with orange marmalade points and a tail half bent near the tippy tip - a semi-putot, as it were in Filipino.

We saw eye to eye and for an instant. I sized him up. He sized me up. He looked at me for a moment with those little cat eyes that were like mysterious ebony slits suspended in a sparkly sea of lively gold. Then he meowed at me as if to say, "hello there, I'm going to be your cat." And so it was. This was some ten months ago.

Well, all I really heard was "meow" but the meaning was still there. It just takes time to really understand cats, you see. Anyway, what was really clear to me then was that this cat was going to be my friend.

And so I received his friendship as gift. I was thankful.

Over the days and the months I spent with that cat I realized that God is trying to teach me something through His creature - something about my recovery. One thing is for sure, my God cares enough about my recovery to send me this little cat of His. For I was the only patient with an approved therapy cat at the center. I began to appreciate my little buddy, Oliver.

Well, that's the name I eventually called my feisty little feline buddy. I tried Vincent but he was not a Vincent. I tried Swissy which is a name of one of our childhood cats but he was no Swissy. Oliver somehow stuck and so that's what we (Oliver and I) agreed his name would be.

Now, some people think cats are self-centered but that's only because they fail to treat every cat as an individual. People think they could fit all cats in a convenient little box. Not so. There's no stereotyping cats. One must be willing to trust cats to truly understand cats.

To really understand the manner by which cats like to express their own way of companionship, one must learn to be patient about them, accepting both the good and the bad with paws and claws, dander and fur, whisker and fang and all. One must love first and then understand.

And one must never try to think ahead of a cat! This would only lead to frustration. Cats like to live in the moment, you see: Not in the past, not in the future, my friend, just today. So when my Oliver is giving me therapy - we're always in the moment: JFT.

Active addiction affects not just human relationships. It affects all relationships. It breaks our natural connection with all living things - cats, dogs, plants, and trees - so that locked up in that prison from within the self we become truly isolated.

Even the angels weep when the darkness of drug abuse pulls our souls deep in the mire of things beneath our human dignity. Their tears fall like the rain that we never see from those prisons we create from within ourselves. Only God could bust us loose. But we first must learn to hearken to His voice. Unfortunately, not all addicts survive this process.

I am grateful I did knowing I could not have done it alone.

So thank You LORD and thank you all!

Thank you, Oliver!

Of course, there are still those familiar temptations and problems thrown willy-nilly amidst the vicissitudes of this life - but once one becomes familiar with what life - in those moments - has to offer, patiently and resolutely, one soon learns of a freedom that was not there before. Recovery then becomes a viable choice - the freedom to be free at last.

Truly, there is life after drugs.

---<--@

A really bad sketch of Oliver the cat.