Our Chicken Soup cat

Our 14-some-year-old cat, Augie, unwillingly posed for his author breakout photo with the newest Chicken Soup for the Soul volume, My Very Good, My Very Bad Cat.  He qualified for the second category (bad) about three or four years ago when he decided Christmas morning was a wickedly great time to escape his injury containment, despite having a recovery cone on his head after a vet trip for fight injuries. After three weeks of no cat, we decided his final hour had come, probably in some frozen shed. Then he returned home, repentant in his cat way.

My essay, one of 101 chosen for the book, is titled "The Prodigal Cat," and pokes fun at his ill-chosen decision.  But I think there's also a big lesson from it for our human tendency to choose to walk apart from God's best plan for our lives. Like the Prodigal Son lesson taught by Jesus, we tend to think we have it all figured out, and then find "our way" is the wrong way. The book offers the comforting balance that, besides cats who really earn the title "very bad cat," there are some amazingly good cats, too.  This is my sixth time to have an essay in a "Chicken Soup" compilation. The book officially releases Feb. 6.