Answered Prayer: The Power of a Well-Baked Chocolate Chip Cookie

Our neighbors are wonderful people.  Wonderful.  Seriously, I couldn’t ask for better people in my neighborhood.  There is ONE neighbor, however, who lives about a block up our other street (our house sits on a corner) who is a tremendously bitter person.  And he hates our cat, who constantly escapes and heads right up his direction.  You may have heard how last year Brutus was wandering the neighborhood and got caught in one of this guy’s live traps that was actually on another neighbor’s property, and the bitter neighbor up the hill tried to cart our cat away and kill him, and would have succeeded if it weren’t for the watchful eye of another neighbor who ran down and got me.  I was extremely pregnant at the time and had bronchitis.  I wheezed my way up the hill and the cat hating neighbor, who we have come to call “Mr. Mean Cat Man” yelled and chewed me out in a most sinister, evil way until I was sobbing.  I got the cat back home safely, however.

The rescue neighbor witnessed the whole thing, and how Mr. Mean Cat Man was threatening me with the fact that he had all sorts of squeezing traps to kill animals in his yard and things of that nature, and she reported him to some authority who came and inspected his yard.  I’m not sure anything came of that, but it did make the man even MORE bitter, and since he suspected I was the one who called the authorities, he harassed me all summer long whenever he’d see that Brutus had escaped.  This led to me nearly loosing my mind trying to keep a cat in who wanted to be out while wrestling a baby and four other kids out the door.  He did many, many things to make my life miserable.  I won’t bore you with the details.

When the weather got warmer this spring, I made the decision to try to keep the cat in as much as possible, but not to chase after him if he got loose.  The cat was happy.  We all had a relaxing summer.  The cat stayed safe.  The cat man didn’t come into our yard at all.

Until yesterday.  Our neighbors across the street were removing a concrete driveway, which is a noisy affair.  Mr. Mean Cat Man came slithering down to our corner “to see what the commotion was about.” Unlike a regular person out for a walk who would go around the block or something and try not to cause a fuss, Mr. Mean Cat Man just walked to the house across the street, grumbled about the commotion, and turned back around.  I was watching from the window, and when he turned around I saw him gaze up at my house, like he realized he’d forgotten to harass me all summer long.  Sure enough, he was back in my yard while I was teaching lessons, to harass the babysitter about the cat being out and chasing birds.  And then this morning, as I was in the car driving up the street to pick up The Banana from preschool, he literally jumped in the middle of the street to stop my car.

Mr. Mean Cat Man:  You’ve been letting your cat run loose again.  He was out this morning.

Me:  Oh really?  He must have gotten out when the kids went to school.

Mr. MCM:  He was in my front yard just a little bit ago.

Me:  Oh, I’m so sorry.

Mr. MCM:  You know, there’s an ordinance about cats running loose. (There is an ordinance, but there are lots of cats running the neighborhood . . . all well taken care of and none of them feral)

Me:  Yes, we try our very best to keep him inside, but sometimes he just gets out.  I have four kids and 30 piano students, and that cat is very determined to leave when the door is opened.

Mr. MCM:  (positively growling at me)  Well, if he gets in my conibear trap, he’s going to be DEAD!

Me: (in a magnificently cheerful voice)  Sorry.  But I don’t really think you should actually have those traps, especially next to a school.

Mr. MCM:  (absolutely sputtering) I HAVE CAUGHT SEVEN SKUNKS AND THIRTEEN RACCOONS THIS SUMMER! I AM DOING THIS NEIGHBORHOOD A FAVOR!

And he stormed off back toward his house.  I drove to preschool quite unsettled, because he really is a bitter person.  All of his actions are just driven by meanness.  He could do the same things and just be kinder about it and everyone would get along so much better.  He’s been mean to other people that live near him as well.

We got home and scooped up the cat who was waiting by the door and brought him inside.  Then I told The Banana (who is very fearful of that man’s foreboding presence) that we were going to make him some chocolate chip cookies because he needed something cheerful in his life.  And we did.  We had lunch; the cookies came out of the oven.  I put the two smallest kidlets down for their afternoon nap/rest time, and I got a nice little basket and lined it with a nice cloth napkin.  I filled one half of the basket with some Bayfield apples and the other half with a stack warm, freshly baked cookies in a little paper sack.  I wrote a little note about how I was sorry that our cat sometimes escaped and that I hoped he’d like the cookies and apples and that his day would be less bitter.  Yes, I actually wrote “less bitter” even though I probably shouldn’t have.  I kind of wanted to kill the guy with kindness.

I started up the street, thinking I would just leave it on his doorstep, but sure enough, there he was, in his stooped stance, angrily washing off his asphalt driveway. Oh great, I thought.  I’m going to have to talk to him again.  And I was a bit fearful of that, because he really can get under your skin and make you feel terrible about everything.  So, I started praying hard.  I prayed that the joy of Christ would shine through my cookies and that this crazy mean guy would be less nasty.  (Maybe kind of silly, but I really just wanted to turn around and go back to my house at that point.)

I marched right up to his driveway with a confident step, even though I was NOT feeling confident.

Me:  “Here!  This is for you!”

He looked at me in disbelief, completely shocked.

Mr. MCM:  (in a shocked, guarded, slightly grumpy tone):  Well, thank you?  You want the basket back, don’t you. (that was a sentence, not a question, spoken like he knew there had to be some kind of a catch to this whole affair.)

Me:  Nope!

I marched back down the hill and into my house.  A half hour later he was at my back door, looking sheepish and a bit sorry.  He said he didn’t want my cat to get hurt anymore than I did, and that he’d take down his conibear trap.  I said thank you.  He suggested we keep Brutus on a leash, and I explained how he was such an escape artist and how he got out of every collar and leash right before our very eyes, and that we really have tried everything.  He said again he’d take down the trap, and I brightly said thank you again, and he left.

I nearly fell over with the astonishment of it all.  There really is something to that “Love your neighbor” stuff.  I guess the cookies must have tasted good?