It's All About Belle

 Belle came back from her hygiene visit to the Vet in terrible shape; throwing up everything she ate, suffering from an upset stomach, refusing to eat, smelling like some cheap French Perfume on top of the awful odor her own body was putting out, and having anxiety attacks when the Fab Five tried to nudge her or have anything to do with her – hiding in the dining room under the buffet. I thought she was dying. She was scooting on the carpet, growling at the kittens, trying to bite and scratch me if I tried to help her.  She might still die, but not if I have anything to do with it.

I went into action. Remember the baby gates we installed a few years ago during the ringworm episode? The Five can jump over them when they are closed, but Belle cannot.  So I moved Belle into the sunny, cheerful Blue Bedroom. She spends a lot of time in there anyway, but now the gate is closed.

I overnighted two of those Palm-in-a-Planter litter boxes (one for Sissy Emma's Bathroom) and installed one in Belle's new "continuous care" facility. I provided bowls for food and water. This afternoon, her water bowl will be replaced by a new fountain.

I expected to find her dead that first morning. I had taken away her Rx meds. What good is prednisone that was prescribed for throwing up if you're throwing up constantly? I took the Dr. Hill's Urinary Tract hard food away from her because kibbles have a history of being nearly impossible for her to digest. I found her sitting up in the worst smelling bedroom I have ever seen.

Day two found her diarrhea gone. Now she was constipated, and I began letting her have coconut oil for that. She liked it. She hadn't  really eaten enough to make poop and was not drinking enough water. She still couldn't stay awake; rather, she slept almost 24 hours.

Day three found Belle drinking her water, eating some, using her litter box a little, and sunning on the small couch she has always loved. I put her bed in the closet, the door ajar, for privacy, and installed her scratcher lounge, another of her favorites, and brought in Lamb Chops. Mr. Hyde brought her the little Scottish tartan mouse he loves so much and put it in her bed. She ate her dinner which consists of the canned food she has always eaten  –  except that the ingredients have been modified and upgraded to grain free.

This morning, Belle was waiting for her breakfast. She has not thrown up again. She has used her box. The foul odor is gone from the room. The Five jumped the fence and we all watched Le Tour de France up on the bed (the spread of which is changed every morning after the vacuuming and the box cleaning). Everyone got brushed during commercials. She hasn't tried to bite me again or to attack the kittens.

We've (the Fab Five and me) watched television in the Blue Bedroom every night with Belle whether or not she was asleep. We stay a couple of hours before the others get restless and head for the porch.

Then I talk to her. I tell her that I suspect that she's in pain and that it's okay to give up and give in to the call of the Rainbow Bridge. I tell her that I know she's very old and how much I've enjoyed her living with me. Because I don't think I'm taking her back to the Vet. She needs to be tranquil and happy. She doesn't have a terminal illness, she has arthritis and the other, worsening problems of old age.

For now, she's had lunch and is sleeping in the sunshine. I hope that tomorrow she will look happier and healthier than this.

A New Kind of Bible Study

A small shelf of Bibles! I sometimes wonder how I came to be the caretaker of this mostly dogeared and worn collection.

I have inherited Mother's "Living Bible," a paraphrased version of the scriptures, as well as Ms. Vera's (second MIL) New King James Version. I have my cousin Fred's remarkable gift of the NKJ Study Bible that he used to prepare many of his excellent Adult Sunday School Lessons and, also, one of his Methodist Hymnals.

One Bible on this shelf was given to me by a valued customer, during business hours, the day she moved away from Jacksonville. She was Primitive Baptist. Most of our conversations had involved the subject of speaking in tongues. She was appreciative of my open-mindedness. I know that all things are possible.

I see a few of my (required) Bible Study Bibles, the NIV and the New Revised Standard Version, there on the first row. The Pentateuch is sitting out of place. I have another bookshelf for non-Christian religious volumes. It was given to Wayne and me by a Jewish friend who owned and acted as a traveling salesman for Franel Optical, a wholesale company, after many spirited  discussions. The beautiful book is written in both Hebrew and English.

I have a brand new (easy to hold paperback) King James Bible in my beloved Cambridge Edition. I impulsively gave my well-used one to a man who was learning to read at thirty-six years of age and was confused that there were so many and different translations of The Scriptures. I told him to use the Cambridge for it comes closer to true translation than any other. Then I handed him mine and we read. Sitting nearby in this picture is a copy of the King James 1611 Edition that I studied in college.

Also, behind the Bibles that we can see, I have the black zippered Bible of my childhood with the beautiful watercolor insertions and my Baptismal date notated. (By Immersion, Easter Sunday, 1952)

There is a white zippered Bible, too; the one presented to me as a child in Vacation Bible School for having memorized the most Bible verses. Also, there's a small New Testament. I won it in an essay contest in 1954.

Behind the second row, I've saved copies of the books inscribed by the Essenes (and others) onto the Dead Sea Scrolls – googled and printed out via my computer many years ago. They're all together in a folder. I also own them in paperback. I have a second Apocrypha stored in the back, too.

So you might be asking why a person with obviously well-read and annotated Scriptures on her bookshelves and a fair amount of Biblical knowledge under her belt would be undertaking a new project of reading and studying. You know from my Goodreads reviews that I already read many religious and philosophical books.

The answer is the evolution of the institution of the American church; the torn condition of our country (belittling and blaming the religious and vice versa); the rampant quoting and cartooning of scriptures out of context on social media; the confusion about what spirituality even means; the reasons behind the question of why church leaders no longer seem to act as spiritual advisors;  the realization of the fact that some in organized religion talk through both sides of their mouths, espousing liberal changes in church dogma publicly while resisting change privately; as well as other questions and concerns about hatred, bigotry, delusion, deemphasis on education, and an incendiary political climate.

I've been re-visiting churches, just as I did a decade ago, for over a year off and on. In my last Bible Study session, several years ago, the leader of the discussion said that he was tired of hearing "What would Jesus say?" and was ready to hear, "What would Jesus do?" Or was that vice versa?

Either way, it made no sense to me because I am a proponent of personal relationships. I would rather ask, "What would Jesus have ME to do?"

Is He recorded in the Bible as actually having broached this, my inquiry? What was the ancient prophecy regarding how He would act, think, and teach in the future? What did He say about similar events when He was alive? Did He take any actions relating to my personal questions? Did He point the way, abstractly, for me? Has the institution of the church failed to take notice that reality is very different in the modern world and some answers must be found through extrapolation and/or prognostication?

So I am busy on a three-pronged personal mission that might just last the rest of my life. I am beginning to seriously study the Prophets, to re-read the recorded words of Jesus, those printed in red, and to try to wrap my head around the history of the churches of both Jerusalem and Rome in order to get a handle on how and why the Roman church evolved in the ways it did. Enlightened by God? Manipulated by uninspired and self-serving mere men? A little of both?

I won't speak of or write about this quest again. I feel as if I am compelled to do research for my own self-knowledge and in order to clarify my own actions in dangerous and confusing times. The older I get, the more attuned I am, transcendentally, to the events around me. The Epiphany I had as a fourth grader and the realistic "Sea of Galilee" dreams of my childhood produced an adult who understood that the Great Mystery was more than all the gurus, bishops, and scientists in the world could ever solve and that there was a grain of truth in everything concrete that any of us would ever learn.