The Story of Princess Buttercup

Princess Buttercup on the left with her brother Tubby snoozing beside her.

As Christmas approaches the Deckard household we find ourselves embroiled in busy times.  We have an excited 6-year-old, a newly-excited 3-year-old experiencing her first conscious Christmas, plus a dad and mom running everywhere to make sure meals are made, presents wrapped, and Christmas Eve services accounted for.  The hustle and bustle is in full swing!

But it was not always that way for me.  As I beam in gratitude for so many people surrounding me, family and friends both, during this joyous holiday I hearken back to a time when I was all but alone on Christmas.  It was my first Christmas in Iowa, six months after graduating from seminary and accepting my first call.

You don't get to choose where you will serve when you leave seminary.  You can put in a request for the church to send you to a favored location, but it's kind of like the army.  You ask, you hope, then you go where they tell you to.  Being from Portland, I requested the church call me somewhere in the West.  Apparently western Iowa was as far in that direction as they could imagine, because there I was in frosty December.  Family and friends were back home.  Fellow seminary students had scattered to the wind, serving their own calls.  When the 25th rolled around the only person in my house, or anywhere in reach, really, was...me.

As you can imagine, this was a semi-depressing situation.  My family had mailed gifts but that actually made the loneliness worse.  Without the presents I could have pretended that this was just another day...a day off for me, in fact.  But when the postman delivered those presents I was stuck.  I couldn't ignore them, nor did I want to.  But you have not lived until you've opened Christmas presents on a wooden floor in your living room alone...no tree, no stockings, no nothing.  The gifts almost become ironic, highlighting the situation instead of alleviating it.

But as I sat down to unwrap the parcels I realized I wasn't quite alone.  You see, when I graduated from seminary I promised myself two things.  First, I'd save enough money to get a satellite dish so I could watch my beloved Portland Trail Blazers.  Second, I wanted a cat.  It didn't have to be a fancy cat, just one like I had growing up...something to say, "Hello" to when I came in the house, someone to sit on my lap and purr when I watched TV.

A month prior, right around Thanksgiving, I had made both my dreams come true.  DirecTV installed a dish and I saw my first Trail Blazers game in years.  Plus I made a trip to the local shelter to get a kitten.  Sadly they didn't have any at the moment, just grown-up cats.  I asked the attendant when she thought they might get in more kittens but as I did so my hand accidentally drifted towards one of the cat cages.  A soft paw came out and curled around my fingers.  The paw drew my hand to the cage bars where a little tabby-cat face peeked out.  When my fingers met the bars the tabby cat nuzzled them with her cheek.  I stooped down to look and met a hopeful gaze staring back at me.

Well, why not?  A kitten would probably be too much trouble anyway.  Besides, this cat was only two years old and she was small enough to be a big-sized kitten.  I asked to take her home.

Being a young-ish male apparently made me a person of suspicion to the cat-minder at the shelter.  She asked sternly, "Now, you are going to take good care of this cat, right?"  Ha!  She didn't know me very well.  I named the kitty "Princess Buttercup" and we immediately became best of friends.  She greeted me at the door, sat on my lap, curled in my arms, and even played fetch upon occasion!  We quickly grew to love each other.

But it wasn't until that first Christmas alone in Iowa that I discovered Princess Buttercup's best trick of all.  She loved...and I mean loved...opening presents.  I took the brown parcel paper off of the packages my family had sent, revealing ribbons and brightly-colored wrapping paper beneath.  And suddenly I had company.  Princess Buttercup pounced on the first present and began opening it with her teeth.  I couldn't help it.  I laughed out loud.  She didn't stop until all the paper was off of that box.  I opened it and saw what was inside.  She didn't care about that.  She was waiting for me to pull out the next box.  As soon as I did she went at it again.  She and I unwrapped every present my family had sent together.  She was as happy as a clam and I was smiling too.   I had made her Christmas and she had made mine.  I wasn't alone after all.  As long as she was around, I never would be.

We had liked each other plenty before, but that Christmas Day ended the getting-to-know-you period for Princess Buttercup and I, making us family.

Eventually things changed, of course.  I got married.  (Though one of the litmus tests for Careen was whether Princess Buttercup liked her.  Fortunately she did.)  Pocket and Tubby came along, which took some adjustment for both Princess Buttercup and I.  We moved to Idaho, cats in tow.  Then Derek and Ali came, human family members to supplement the feline ones.  But through it all Princess Buttercup and I stuck together.  She was my kitty.  I was her dad.  And every Christmas since has reminded me of our first together, mostly because I dare not put presents under the tree until the wee hours of Christmas morning lest they get unwrapped early!  And even then I pretty much have to sleep by the tree to guard them.

Those memories will be especially poignant this Christmas.  Princess Buttercup is old now and has been failing.  Having just checked on her, it seems like today is the day I have to take her to the vet to say goodbye.  I wanted to wait until after Christmas, to have one more together, but it doesn't look like we'll be able to have that.  So I gave her the little kitty bed I bought her this year.  I lifted her into it and we'll cuddle for a while, then it'll be time to go.

It's OK, though.  Everything has its time.  Her life has been long and happy, as has been my time with her...almost certainly more happy than either of us would have been had we missed each other that day in the Fort Dodge, Iowa Animal Shelter or had I stuck to my original idea of getting a kitten.  Besides, Christmas isn't really about the presents, no matter how much you love opening them.  Christmas is about the promise that joy doesn't end, it's about hope coming true, light shining forth, goodness living forever no matter what.  The baby Jesus would have sad goodbyes too, but they wouldn't last.  Afterwards would come a new hello.  I know this, and I've told it to Princess Buttercup while stroking her head.  She'll be OK and so will I.  And in a little while we'll get to be together again.

She's been a good cat, the Christmas Angel messenger who declared to a wayward shepherd that he didn't have to be alone.  Thank God for that message, and for angels wherever we find them.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)