Old Time Religion

I decided it was about time that Dogger and Kitty got churched. I was afraid that they were going to fall victim to some door to door Gawd hustler and wind up in some back ally vanity Mega church somewhere pawing snakes and writing checks to charlatans named “Brother Bubba” or “Bishop Lonnie” . Being able to tell those “people” that they have at least been seen by a Priest can go a long way to taking the wind out of their double knit sails animal evangelicalism-wise.

Dogger is all ready the nicest dog in the world, so a little blessing and a little holy water would only improve her disposition. She’s so sweet now that coming on contact with too much of her slobber can bring on diabetes. She has been giving Sweetness and Light seminars for garden fairies and house elves. Tinker Bell pays to have her review her speeches and Santa? Santa wants her to replace Rudolph! Dogger is all about the goodness and the lightness.

And then there is The Kitty.

The Kitty is not a sweet kitty. Okay, there should be a * there, he is sweet to a limited number of people, sometimes. He plays favorites and is an expert at the "social cut". For him there is a thin line between love and hate and you are standing on the wrong side of it. He does however consistently remember that I feed him and he recognizes that if he kills me in my sleep his breakfast will be very late and that would be unacceptable. I owe my life to his hunger pangs. He’s not so much an animal companion as he is a stomach with feet.

Clearly, The Kitty needs all the help he can get.

So when there was a notice in the church bulletin that in honor of St. Francis day, the Church would be holding a pet blessing, I cleared my schedule.

I remembered that I took at least The Kitty to this once before and I was tardy. The bulletin should have said “Blessing of the animals blah, blah PROMPTLY AT 4PM!” . I almost missed out. I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

On the road to find out
We got there early. Real early. A half and hour early. It was too early. You try to fit in to a crowd walking a huge dog and carrying a cat carrier. You can’t. It’s hard to not look goofy and very possibly crazy when toting house pets around in public. I don’t understand how those starlets don’t feel stupid carrying their pretend dogs around in their purses out in public. I felt like a walking ad for stupid. A walking hissing ad for stupid.

Dogger was of course flawless. We walked around the block and went and hid in Minnie until another car pulled up with a dog.

There were more people now.
By this time there were more people with dogs milling around. No one else brought there cats, there was nothing in the bulletin about a cat prohibition, so I don’t understand that. Other dogs barked and carried on and generally acted like less than model dog citizens. Dogger was perfect.

Dogger behaved.

She kept her nose to herself and she didn’t bark with the other dogs either. Dogger was trying to be respectful. Kitty was not as respectful.

Hisssssssss

The priest arrived at 3:59 and seemed eager to get the show on the road. I thought he was going off to check the fine print in his job description under “Other duties as assigned”

doing His thing...

...but when he came back, it was not with a sharpie, but a with a Chihuahua.. In its defense it was shaking like a leaf but it resisted it’s deep seated need to yap. He quickly got on with it, and the ceremony, while brief, was lovely.

Blessing the animals

When he saw the cat carrier the priest asked me if that was a cat in there, when I said yes, he all but poured holy water on the carrier. The priest is clearly not a cat person despite his catdog or it could be simply that The Kitties reputation preceded him. Daisy hardly needed any holy water.