My little cat, my beloved companion is 19 years old. He was rescued from the street, a timid little thing with a flea allergy. With love and patience he became a most affectionate and loyal friend accompanying me around the house wherever I happened to be. Recently he has been very poorly; seven months ago he suddenly went blind, and that coupled with his 90% deafness made life almost insurmountable for him. It was then that in the household we started to ask the question, when is the right time? As pet owners we have a responsibility to ensure that our companion pet has a good quality of life and does not suffer unnecessarily, and so we started to monitor his activity, following him around and checking whether he could cope – he could and did. Not only that, despite being told that his blindness would be permanent, after a week it seemed to lift and since then it has been intermittent, coming and going unpredictably.

Two weeks ago, he had some type of neurological seizure, again we asked, is it time? It seemed like it was as his behaviour changed and he took to his bed. We started to negotiate time frames with each other, we’ll give him two weeks, no, a month. However, the little trooper fought back again, and within a week he was back to his old friendly self.

When is the right time? I can only assume, the right time is when he is ready, and somehow he will let us know when that is. We spend a lot of time pondering in life when we should do this or that, expecting there to be a definitive date, but we often find that when the time is right things just fall into place and obstacles disappear. Things happen when we are ready, not necessarily prepared, but ready on a deeper level. The old adage that when the pupil is ready the teacher will appear is never truer in Spiritualism with our recognition that the Spirit World know more than us. When we try to force change into our lives and it doesn’t happen, then perhaps we are simply not ready for the changes we wish to make.

Minister Suzanne Gibson-Foy