Love Is a Game of Cat and Mouse

The muscle pain of fibromyalgia conspired with the unbelievably overwhelming fatigue that comes with the exhaustion brought on by the 110 degree heat, and it was all I could do to make it down the hall to my room. I flopped face down on the bed with one arm pinned beneath me.


I weighed the best options for extracting the pinned arm, but didn't have the strength, and the weariness prevented me from reaching a solution. I fell soundly asleep, too tired to extricate the arm.


From the dark, foggy depths of sleep, I became aware of an unidentifiable, visceral, primeval sound calling out to me; softly, intently. I tried to climb out of the deep slumber, but could not make it. Again the sound rumbled softly into my foggy state; cross between the lowest, fluttering notes of a bass violin and the mournful cry of a whippoorwill.


I breathed deeply and furrowed my brow, trying to identify the alien sound. It took too much strength to open my eye and I realized I’d fallen asleep so fast I’d been drooling onto my pillow. I slurped awkwardly, trying to rectify the situation without moving my head. 

With the right side of my face pressed into the quilt on my bed, I tried to open my left eye, but saw only at Renoir-like blur of black and grey and turquoise.


I tried to wipe my eye with my free let arm, hoping to rub the blur from my eye so I could focus.

But as happens when the fatigue hits me, I miscalculated my movement and missed my eye completely, bumping instead into the black blob before me.


I instantly identified it as my long-haired, overly-affectionate cat, Spooky by feel - even before the insistent, rumbling, eerily musical sounds from him increased as he realized I’d finally awakened.


I grumbled and pushed him away, too tired and hot to want to pet him. 

But he persisted, his unusual, deep rumbling purr ending in a truncated singsong trill a

He patted me on the nose with one paw. The odd sound pulled me finally from the depths of fatigue and I lifted my head slightly this time and opened both eyes.


Not six inches from my bleary eyes dangled a plump grey mouse in the maw of my affectionate Spooky, both backed by the turquoise blue of my bedroom wall.


“Ugh!” I shoved him away from my face, startled to be awakened to such odd sounds and the close-up view of the captured rodent. I swatted at him again, trying to insure he’d jumped off my bed, as I struggled to my elbow.


But he squatted there looking at me accusingly, and then patting at the rumpled blankets. It occurred to me that in shoving him away, I’d caused him to drop his dead offering, and the mouse was now lost in my blankets. 

Revolted, I pulled the blanket taut so he could grab it and run. But, no mouse.


Maybe it had fallen between the blankets and sheets. I quickly pulled the blanket back, becoming increasingly alarmed. Still no dead mouse carcass…!


At this time, it finally occurred to my fatigue-fogged brain that the mouse had not been dead when Spooky dangled it in my face and ultimately lost his grip on it when I shoved him away! The adrenalin coursed through my being in an instant, and beat out the fatigue. I quickly stumbled out of bed, pulling the blanket, and then the sheets off my bed - only to find no mouse.


I breathed a sigh of relief, realizing he’d somehow scampered away during all of the hullabaloo. But at that moment, I felt a tickling sensation on my calf and quickly realized he’d somehow managed to scamper up my pant leg when he’d escaped into the blankets, and was headed quickly north!


Despite my fatigue, I managed to jump about and dance like a drunken marionette, frantically trying to unbutton my pants with my sleepy, uncoordinated fingers. The mouse and I both exited the pants about the same time, and he ran quickly to safety somewhere.


I collapsed on the edge of the bed, still shaking and trying to decide whether to laugh or cry. 

Poor Spooky stood there looking crushed. Here he had brought me a very special gift of love to make me feel better, and I’d gone and slapped at him and rejected the offering he gave so willingly to the one that he loved.


This made me think…


For those of you who are not feline-friendly, you must know that a cat offering you a dead (or captured) creature is the highest compliment he can pay you. 

If he brings a dead gopher and lays it in your slippers while you sleep, you are greatly revered.


Spooky catching a live mouse and bringing it to offer to his owner who could not wake up had been just about as great a gift of love as I could have received.


And what had I done, but rejected his adoration - and even slapped at him when he’d showed me his adoration and love.


So many times in life we are so caught up in our own ‘stuff’ that we reject those who love us, deeply hurting them either intentionally or unintentionally.


Sometimes it is because we are so caught up in what is going on inside our heads that we don’t even notice the love that is offered. My childhood classmate, Hector Maldonado, comes to mind.

He had a crush on me in grade school and admired me from afar. But in my young mind, he didn’t even cross my radar screen. Avoiding mean old nuns and schoolyard bullies occupied most of my mind and I remained oblivious to Hector’s vying for my attention.


He finally declared his affection for me one morning before school. He arrived at the schoolyard with a bag of marbles he’d bought for me with his allowance.


Clueless as to why this boy who didn’t even make a blip on the radar of my chaotic world would be trying to give me marbles, I declined, saying, “No thanks.  I don’t play marbles.”


From the vantage point of today, of course, I’d have certainly handled the situation better. When he spent his carefully saved pennies and nickels and dimes to buy the ultimate gift a boy could think of, I’d have graciously thanked him with a smile. But it never occurred to me at the time that the handsome, round-faced boy with chocolate skin, big brown eyes and soft black curls could be offering me his heart in his hands along with the bag of marbles.

I still think of him from time to time, fifty years later.




Sometimes we miss out on love not because we are oblivious, but because we are running from emotions that we don’t know how to deal with. Or we believe deep down that no one can really love us.


Philippe, another childhood classmate, comes to mind. With his beautiful brown curls and huge eyes with the most beautiful eyelashes a child can have. He made no secret of his admiration, and was very persistent. But though I admired him, his passion frightened me. Must have been his French roots. My reserved Scotch Presbyterian upbringing left me totally unprepared for the passion that boiled within this young man, so strong and assured and boldly outspoken. I loved him in my own way, but always kept him safely at arms’ length.


And his rival for my affection, Jack. The sweet, amiable Jack was just as persistent and outspoken about his feelings. But though he lacked Philippe’s passion and anger, he was precisely as persistent. Yet I also kept him safely at arms’ length, afraid of the love he offered.


It’s funny, but the three of us - Jack, Philippe and I - had an unusual bond of kinship. I just recently became reacquainted with the now Staff Sergeant Philippe, and it so nice to be able to form a freely-loving relationship with both him and Jack. We are all three very dear to one another. In fact I’ve been invited to fly back to St. Croix next May for Jack’s daughter’s wedding. Who knows, maybe we can get Philippe to fly down, too!


And yet other times it is out of stubbornness that we reject love. We dig in our heels and say, “You cannot make me give in.” Or “you cannot make me forgive you and accept your love.”


My older daughter, Jen, is getting married this coming Sunday in Laguna Beach. I found out from friends of hers on Facebook. Despite many attempts to reach her, my efforts go unrewarded.


Ten years ago in a nasty child custody battle, the girls wound up going to their father, despite my best efforts to prevent it. I knew what a mean, possessive, control freak he could be and that living with him and his teenage bride would not be healthy.


But though the judge said they’d be better off with me, the girls insisted they’d rather live with their dad and his Barbie doll wife. The judge said that they were of the age that they could decide for themselves. And the die was cast.


I got two visitations with them before he just stopped allowing me to see them. 

So I had to bring the police each time I came to pick them up, and it became an armed battle - literally! He told the kids I was the one causing trouble by bringing the police and that they should refuse to go. So they did. And for six years I couldn’t see them or even talk to them.


I finally found Jen mid-way through her senior year at a boarding school in Arizona where they’d banished her to when they decided raising teens isn’t so fun and it gets in the way or your new family.


She was very reluctant to have anything to do with me after years of brainwashing. She didn’t want anything to do with her father and step-mother, whom she had figured out on her own were not very nice at all. But she still believed the horrible things they’d said about me were true.


But she did fly out to California for spring break and came home with us after we attended her graduation. She stayed a while and I thought things might be getting better, but once she was off to summer camp (and then college in Tennessee) she stopped talking to either Nick or me. But only after she managed to get a new school wardrobe and help with financial planning and plane tickets, etc.


I thought at first she was too busy. But when their dorm caught fire a week before school was out and I couldn’t find her, it became obvious she didn’t want anything to do with me.


She’s pretty much not spoken to me for three or four years now. And I still don’t know why. People who meet her say she is sweet and kind and loving. But for me, there is just resentment over childhood issues - some real, some fabricated - that she clings to.


She doesn’t know - or can’t believe - the depth of my love for her. That I’d give my life for her if it were necessary. In fact I just learned recently that she refers to me now as her “birth mom.”


That hurt deeply.


I’d love to see her get married. And meet her groom and welcome him into the family. I’d have loved to be included in the planning and the fun. But it is not to be. In fact on her wedding blog site she lists her sister, Erin, as her only family. I can’t imagine what she’s told the groom’s family about her lack of relatives. But that's her choice. And that’s not even the point.


The point is that once again, here’s an example of ways we can push away the love that can only enrich our lives. Some of her resentment may have justifiable sources in her past. But what a
shame to hang onto them and miss out on unconditional love.


But how different is that from each and every one of us. God offers us unconditional, boundless love. And so often we reject it - for whatever reason we find suitable.


Maybe it’s because we are too caught up in what’s going on in our lives (our own pastimes or mean old nuns and schoolyard bullies.) So we don’t notice (or just ignore) the love He offers us.


Maybe it’s because we are afraid of the emotional connection and what it might do to upset the balanced tight rope of our lives. We’re afraid of what it may cost us, not realizing that it is an un-purchasable commodity. The cost has already been paid. The anguish suffered. Now we need only give in and let His love flow into and through us.


And maybe, like my dear Jen, we are holding on to angers or sorrows or lies of the past - which are often pushed at us by Satan’s doing, filling our lives with anger and turmoil instead of the peace that comes only with God’s love.


So, as my oldest daughter gets married this weekend, I cannot help but think of the cat and mouse that started this whole blog. And the meaning of true love. And the extremes to which the Lord went to ensure that each and every one of us is the rightful heir to that love.


I can only pray that my beloved Jen finds that love some day soon and lets it heal the pains and the scars of childhood so that she and her Travis can walk in God’s love.




Liz Carson Rosas
3 July 2009






“Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”


Colossians 3:12-14






Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7t always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.


Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.


And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13 4-13




And as Paul said in his second epistle to the Corinthians to whom he had preached of the Lord’s love:


“We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our hearts to you. We are not withholding our affection from you, but you are withholding yours from us. As a fair exchange—I speak as to my children—open wide your hearts also.


2 Corinthians 6:11-13




So to all of my friends today (and thanks to those of you who wrote pushing me to continue posting), I say, open your hearts and receive that love. God’s love doesn’t ever come in the form of marbles you can’t use or mice that are revolting. It always comes in the form of peace.


Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.


Philippians 4:4-7