Maybe Charlie isn't so bad after all

Many of you know my valiant efforts to find a new forever home for my vivaciously naughty orange tabby cat, Charlie. Charlie is known around my house as the one who bullies sweet little Midge and eats her food, destroyer of the toilet paper roll in the bathroom every chance he gets, and has been known to pull this little stunt on many a Monday morning right as I'm trying to leave for work:

There's a verse in the Bible that talks about how some just spend their time inventing ways to do evil. That is Charlie in a nutshell.

But yesterday Charlie earned some good PR and he deserves the chance to have his bad name cleared, at least for a few hours. Or minutes. Or seconds, as the case may be.

There was another closed door yesterday. I'll spare you the gory details but rest assured, they were gory and sad. Very, very sad. It's true that I might have overreacted a little bit by locking myself in the bathroom (after verifying that my roommate was in fact gone) and lying down on the bathroom floor and sobbing hysterically for about 45 minutes. But it is what it is and I was really, really sad and that seemed like the most logical thing to do in that moment.

About 35 minutes into my crying fest, party of one, the bathroom doorknob started jiggling. I paused long enough to assess whether it was my roommate suddenly come home or perhaps a poltergeist. The long mournful meow that I heard next confirmed it was actually Charlie come to check on me. This was confirmed by the little orange paw that started making sweeping motions under the door crack.

For as obnoxious as he is 23 hours and 57 minutes of the day, Charlie does have a tender heart. It really bothers him when I cry. He feels compelled to jump into action and do his part to comfort me, and last night was no exception.

So I opened the bathroom door and let him come in. Then I fell over wailing again on the floor. Charlie took it in stride. First, he came and snuggled in close to my head and put his little paw on my arm. For some reason, this actually made me cry harder. He sensed that and then got up and paced around my crumpled body, stopping once to lick my leg for a few moments. For good measure, he also bit my foot twice. I have no doubt that if I had died on that bathroom floor, he would have wasted no time snacking on me until help came, 20 minutes later in the form of my roommate returning home.

There's a verse in the Bible that says, "Praise be to...the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles." I thought of that verse last night as I was lying on the bathroom floor.  I was alone in that moment, but I wasn't. God sent Charlie, good old obnoxious Charlie, into the bathroom with me so that I wouldn't be alone in my time of sorrow. Praise be to the God who can use a naughty tabby cat to comfort His child when she's sad.

So it turns out, Charlie isn't so bad. He would be a great comforting addition to any home, maybe even yours.