Way back when I was still single, some time before 1970, I was living alone in a little Saskatchewan town and running a grain elevator. Well, I wasn’t completely alone — there was a cat sharing the house with me. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that there would have to be a cat in the picture.

I was sound asleep one night when the yowling of the cat penetrated the fog of sleep. My first thought was that she was hungry, but no, her food dish was full. I stumbled around the house, turning lights on and off, even turning on the outside light and peering out at my pickup just a few feet from the door. There was nothing unusual anywhere and the cat didn’t seem upset anymore, so I stumbled back to bed, muttering “stupid cat.”

I should have known better. The next morning I got up, had breakfast and drove to the grain elevator, opened the doors, unlocked the office and walked in. I happened to glance out the office window and stopped in my tracks. There on the front of my pickup was a British Columbia license plate. I wrote down the number and called the RCMP. Now I understood what the cat had been trying to tell me — someone was messing around just outside my door. No doubt he had left quickly when I turned the lights on.

The police informed me a couple days later that they had caught up with the guy at Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, with my licence plate still on the car that he had stolen in B.C. It took my neighbour across the street a few more days to discover the matching B.C. licence plate on the back of his car.

I wish I could say that I have always gotten the message when the Holy Spirit tried to get my attention. To my regret, I have often let His warnings and the gentle prompts pass me by. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand what He was saying, but it seemed too hard a thing for me to do and I persuaded myself that I must have misunderstood.

Ignoring the cat usually doesn’t have serious consequences. I have slowly learned that when the Spirit speaks it pays to trust that the message is important and to obey, even if what He asks is not at all what I want to do.