Kitty Korner

I hope I haven't confused anyone too terribly with my sense of humor. I was trying to indicate that the comments section was the place to leave questions, so I typed a little message. Only the first half of the message posted, the first half being a little joke about giving your "pop quiz" answer in feet.

The second half explained that the comments section is the place to leave questions and comments.

I suppose if you have to explain a joke, it isn't a very good joke. Perhaps it's actually too private a joke, too personal to me. As a child in school, the very idea of math problems caused my brain to freeze into a solid block, forcing tears out of my eyeballs. The questions always sounded like this to me:

One train is leaving New York at 9am moving 60 mph. Another train is leaving Kansas City at 11am travelling 70 mph. Each train has to make 7 stops along the route. The New York train takes 5 minutes extra to unload passengers at each stop and the train from Kansas City takes an extra 8 minutes, plus the engineer stops in St. Louis to visit his mother for 27 minutes while the passengers twiddle there thumbs and complain. The train from New York encounters a sleet storm that freezes the track and delays it for 92 minutes. The train from Kansas City gets stuck in a flood in Springfield, Ill and all the passengers take the opportunity to get off the train and visit the boyhood home of Abraham Lincoln for 67 minutes. Both trains catch on fire at some point causing a delay of 12 minutes for the New York train and 17 minutes for the Kansas City train. The fire has ruined the coffee pot on the New York train and it makes an unscheduled stop so that six people can run out for Starbucks coffee and on the Kansas City train the conductor has been caught smoking a uncontrolled substance in the lavatory and the train has to stop for his arrest.

Which train will arrive first in Chicago?

Give your answer in feet.

I'll try again to indicate that the comments section is the place to leave questions. I have some great questions I'm excited to answer, but today we have a matter of some urgency:

Is this the comment place where you ask questions? I desperatly need to know if there is a patron saint for a lost cat. Her name is Magda and she has had quite a life with us but she is missing... Help--Help-- and many thanks Your blog is something else. Cant wait to read it everyday......

Is Magda named after St. Mary Magdalene? That would be a good place to start. We always encourage the faithful to name their children after a saint so that that child automatically has the patronage of that saint. It never occurred to me to do that same for a pet.

Why not? There are quite a few animal lovers in the Communion of Saints.

Your girl is St. Gertrude of Nevilles, the patron saint of cats and cat lovers. Once again, we have to extrapolate a bit to arrive at that patronage. She has zero to do with cats.

There are two St. Gertrudes. The other one is St. Gertrude the Great. Both of them had a devotion to the Poor Souls in Purgatory.

In our St. Gertrude's case, she envisioned mice to be the Poor Souls in Purgatory, come back to plead for help. Don't get upset. It's not reincarnation. It's a metaphor.

And who else likes mice? Cats.

The truth is Gertrude lived a pastoral life and probably had a few cats with her at the convent and out in the garden. She was an herbalist. She is depicted in one of two ways in art, either deep in prayer with a mouse running up her staff, or out in the garden collecting herbs surrounded by cats.

If for some reason that doesn't float your boat, you can go with St. Rock, the patron saint of dogs, Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha, the patron saint of turtles, St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animal lovers, St. Eligius, the patron saint of horses and cattle and St. George, the patron saint of sheep. They are the SPCA of Heaven.

St. Anthony is the patron saint of lost items. He is often on the back of a St. Francis of Assisi medal, I have noticed, which indicates to me that he will also be happy to help locate missing animals.