c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) First, my mother. Now, my cat.

I had no idea cats could get breast cancer until a couple of weeks ago when I felt a lump on Cleo’s tummy. It’d have to come off, the vet said, and there was a good chance it was malignant.

Deja vu to not quite a year ago when an oncologist told Mom the same thing.

The medical ritual for my cat was almost the same as it had been for my mother: first blood work, then exploratory surgery to see if there were more tumors, and if there were, more mammary tissue would have to come out. Then came the big wound with lots of sutures, the bruising and pain, and a week’s wait for the pathology to come back, telling us how advanced the cancer was.

My personal ritual for dealing with Cleo’s diagnosis echoed my response to Mom’s diagnosis. I cried, I worried, I got a little angry and I prayed a lot.

I put up a post on my blog asking people to pray for Cleo. And just as they had with my mother, lots of people said they would. A friend saw my blog post and asked a theological question I had not anticipated: “Are you allowed to pray for a cat?”

My immediate response was, “Of course.” God cares about all of God’s creation, including kitties, I told him.

But his question got me wondering what my own faith tradition and others really say about animals and prayer.

As I began my research, one man’s name came up repeatedly: the Rev. Andrew Linzey, an Anglican priest and professor of theology at Oxford University in England. Linzey, director of Oxford’s Centre for Animal Ethics and author of a number of important books on the subject, is the world’s pre-eminent “animal theologian.”

“Praying for animals may appear a lost cause within Christianity, but in fact there are blessings for animals as far back as … 1614,” Linzey said. “There is a great deal in the Bible that supports the compassionate treatment of animals.”

In Genesis, God establishes a covenant with all living creatures, and in the New Testament, St. Paul alludes to animals being redeemed (along with humans) in his Letter to the Romans where he compares “the groans of creation to the pain of childbirth and creatures awaiting their redemption in Christ,” Linzey said.

“Redemption is clearly a cosmic thing,” Linzey said. “Since animals are going to go to heaven, there can be no good reason why we shouldn’t pray to God for them.”

There is little consensus among religions as to whether animals have souls and afterlives. Most Christian, Jewish and Muslim theologians say animals have souls, but not the kind that live on after their bodies die like humans do. Hinduism, Buddhism and other Eastern traditions, meanwhile, are more inclined to believe animals and humans belong to the same soul cycle of reincarnation. Still, each has something to say about the care and kind treatment of animals.

Within Christianity, perhaps one of the most beloved saints is St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals, whose feast day (Oct. 4) is often marked by people bringing their pets or livestock to church for an annual “blessing of the animals.”

It is said that St. Francis loved animals so much he referred to them as “brothers and sisters” and once gave up his hermit’s cave to a donkey. He is often depicted with birds sitting on his shoulders, and one hand extended to feed (or bless) them. The carved wooden folk art statue of St. Francis I keep in my living room has a bird on each shoulder and what is either a large spotted cat or small Holstein at his feet.

A common Franciscan prayer for animals says, “Blessed are you, Lord God, maker of all living creatures. You called forth fish in the sea, birds in the air and animals on the land. … We ask you to bless this pet.”

I am thrilled to report that both my mother and my cat are doing very well. Both, doctors believe, are now cancer-free. And after radical surgeries _ Mom had a double mastectomy and Cleo had all of her mammary glands removed on the left side of her body _ neither has to endure radiation or chemotherapy.

A few days ago, Cleo had her stitches removed. She’s already pretty much back to her frisky self, so much so that in roughhousing with her younger sister, Mousie, the other day, she knocked over St. Francis and broke his thumb.

Somehow, I don’t think he’d mind.

Nothing Superglue and the power of prayer can’t fix.

(Cathleen Falsani is a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and author of “The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People.”)

KRE/LF END FALSANI775 words

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