Praying for kittens

I'm sitting down in my home office to begin my studying for the day. There's a cold autumn rain outside. A few minutes ago, I was in the bedroom, where the dog was lying on the bed with a blanket bundled around her, enjoying the warmth. I reached under the blanket to pet her, and she rolled lazily onto her back to have her belly rubbed.

Our apartment complex is separated from the neighboring complex by two fences, between which runs an overgrown, creek-like ditch. Feral cats live in that space. A few days ago, the dog was sniffing along the fence with particular sedulity, and when I peeped through, I discovered four kittens. I've been peeping in on them once or twice a day since then. At first, I often found their mother with them, but the past couple of days there's been no sign of her, and yesterday, which was also rainy, I peeped through the fence and found three of the kittens—the fourth has disappeared—wet, dirty, bedraggled, piled on top of one another. I wasn't even sure at first they were still alive, but then I saw one of them, at least, moving a little.

I worried that their mother had abandoned them. Hugo suggested that perhaps my intruding had scared the mother away, a possibility that made me feel sick.

So as I was rubbing my dog's belly, hearing the rain hit the windows, I thought about the kittens, and I felt moved to pray for them. And then I sat there thinking: And what the hell good is that supposed to do? If you're worried, you should go out there and check up on them, and if necessary crawl through the hole in the fence that people use as a shortcut to get from this apartment complex to the next, and go rescue the kittens and take them to a shelter, or at least bring them into the apartment until the rain stops, or something.

I sat there thinking about all the thoroughly practical reasons not to do any of those things. But my guilt wouldn't let me rest, so I put on my coat and went and looked through the fence. The kittens are gone, which I take as a good sign. I assume their mother has moved them somewhere else.

So wherever they are now, I'm praying for them.