Now, I'm A Believer!

In one of my earlier entries, dated 10 May 2008, entitled "Listen To Your Heart", I spoke of how a song helped to save me from out of a deep dark spot in my life then... and I mentioned a certain "Earth Angel"... well, whether you wanna believe it or not, here's what happened the next time I listened to that same song... I know I could hardly believe it myself, but this is ALL TRUE!

The date was 31 May 2008. It was 9.30pm and I was sitting in my living room. I had my laptop in front of me, and was doing something or the other on it. Our cat was still missing at this time, and I was still hoping that somehow someone might be able to find him and bring him back to us. My parents had gone off for their 12-day vacation in Greece, and my younger sis was cleaning things up in the living room, thinking that the cat was never going to come back. And I was listening to the latest F4 album, "Zai Zhe Li Deng Ni" on my laptop.

Song 1 played, "Ti Yan"... then song 2, "Zai Zhe Li Deng Ni"... then song 3, "Ni Shi Wo Wei Yi De Chi Zuo"... then song 4, "Listen To Your Heart" (aka my Earth Angel song)... and here I was thinking that I was going to have a quiet evening, when the doorbell rings, just as Van Ness finishes singing track 4.

Who could possibly be at my door at this time at night?? I open the door, and it's one of my neighbours standing there. This neighbour lady delivers Yakult to my doorstep every week on Tuesday nights, but 31 May was not a Tuesday, so what was she doing ringing my doorbell??

As it turns out, she had picked up a letter that someone had pasted at the lift lobby of my apartment block, and wanted to deliver it to us right away... it seems that someone had found our cat, and was trying to reach us, but didn't know how to contact us! So they had written this letter and pasted it at the 2 lift lobbies in my block, hoping that we might see it and contact them instead... but it was my Yakult lady neighbour who had seen it and delivered the good news straight to my doorstep!

That same night, my sis called the number and got in touch with a guy. This guy said his girlfriend had our cat, and asked for our contact number. Moments later, his girlfriend calls my sis on her handphone and it sounds very much like the cat she had with her was indeed our cat, Guchi. So my sis and I got dressed up in a hurry and took a taxi to her house to collect our cat. She stays somewhere in the West Coast. When we got there, we waited for her below her block. She came downstairs with our cat, and the moment we saw him, we knew it was Guchi!

He was skinnier than before, 'cos he hadn't been eating much. But other than that, he was in good shape. They had taken really good care of him, we really couldn't have asked for a better person to find him. She has 6 other cats at home, so she is really a cat lover too. She said that her cats are in better condition than Guchi was, when she first found him, so we asked her where she found him, and how long has he been with her? She said she found him in our multi-storey carpark, and she said that he's been with her for only a week so far.

That's when we told her that he had actually been lost for 18 days already. He was missing on 13 May, and he was already lost for 10 or 11 days by the time she had found him, so it's no wonder that he was in such bad shape. Guchi is essentially a house cat, so how could he possibly fend for himself when he's on his own?? I'm guessing that he simply hadn't been eating, because nothing he found out there was to his taste, and he's a pretty fussy eater, so it's no wonder he lost so much weight.

When she brought him home, she tried to feed him Science Diet, but he wouldn't eat. And only today did she try to feed him Fancy Feast. Not sure which flavour she got him, but she said that when she fed him Fancy Feast, for the first time, he ate voraciously and finished everything! He also had some milk to drink and some cheese to eat earlier that day, before she received our call and before we came to pick him up.

In any case, Guchi has been eating really really well since he came home, and I'm sure that in no time, he will be back to his usual fatty self. He was feeling insecure when he first stepped into the house again. He wanted to be with me and my sis all the time, and he was searching the whole place for my parents, but we told him that they were not at home, so after awhile, he stopped trying to look for them.

We're glad to have him back again. But what I'm amazed about is that I was just listening to "Listen To Your Heart" when we received the good news about him being found again. If that's not an answer to a prayer, and if that's not God speaking to me, then I don't know what is!

Why would I say that it's an answer to a prayer?

Well, coincidentally (or not), another friendly neighbour who is also a cat lover with 4 cats of his own at home had said that he would pray for our cat's safe return. I had first bumped into this familiar-looking neighbour in the multi-storey carpark, and have been in contact with him ever since then. When he heard that my cat was missing, he said that he wasn't really all that religious, but he would pray for our cat's safe return and hope for the best.

As it turns out, not only was our cat safely returned, but when we asked the person who found him where they had found him, they said that it was in the multi-storey carpark... the same place where I had first met this cat-lover neighbour... OH WOW!!!

So when we found the cat, he was the first person I contacted to tell the good news to! To paraphase, I told him, "Do you know how I know that it was your prayer that was being answered and not mine? Because our cat was found in the multi-storey carpark, and that's where I first met you."

Do you believe that God speaks to us, even today, right here and now? Well, I wasn't too sure about that before... but now, I'm a believer!