Today, I am bringing home kittens. What is the prayer for the adoption of new cats? Is there a ritual for carrying them over the threshold? It seems as though these new additions to the family should be properly celebrated, and brought to God’s attention:
For eyes that pierce the dark,
when we least expect it,
let us give thanks;
For the duty of care,
feeding, scooping,
cleaning, and scouring,
let us give thanks;
For fragility and agility,
the dance on the stairs,
dangerous vulnerability,
give thanks;
For the purring murmur in the night,
reminder of love awakened,
give thanks;
For the strange song,
not altogether holy,
give thanks to all that is Holy;
For the incantation of
all creation contained in the call
to the stewardship of a cat,
I give thanks;
For the foreshadowing in claws
of judgement,
and for their retraction,
I give thanks;
For curiosity that God has seeded;
for negligent affection,
hiding the impossible:
comprehension, connection
with the ineffable mind of One
who would create camels and scorpions
out of the same clay;
I give thanks for this feline revelation,
mediation, distracting reification:
Thanks be to God for the cat.
The Revd Rosalind C Hughes is the Rector of the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio. She blogs at RosalindHughes.com. Her first book, A Family Like Mine: Biblical Stories of Love, Loss, and Longing is due out April 1 from Upper Room Books. And yes, it features kittens.





This is wonderful. It gets me thinking about prayers for the birth of foster kittens in my care, prayers for their weening, and prayers for saying good-bye to them (and prayers for my resident cats who almost put up with the fosters).
Thank you!
Thanks for this prayer. We will be adopting a couple of cats and/or kittens from our local shelter soon. It’s been too long between cats. Our last two cats, Ray and Fluellen, lived 17 and 19 years respectively.