“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.