About twenty-five years ago Dr. Clyta Harris and her husband separated. Clyta was left with three young children and a fourth on the way. “I was devastated and so lonely I was physically ill,” she says. “I was in a graduate program, working full time, and trying to provide a secure home for my little ones.” Due to financial problems, Clyta had sold their nice, large house and purchased a smaller, not-so-nice one that she could afford on her salary.

As the weather got colder, she and the children were plagued with a family of mice. Clyta was a brave woman most of the time, but the sight of a mouse sprinting across her living room floor reduced her to a bowl of mush. One evening she awakened her oldest son at 3am to help her find a mouse---she could hear it scratching but could not locate it.

Her son found it in a small waste basket, anxiously trying to climb the slick sides and run for safety. “Another night I awoke and in the light from a street lamp saw a mouse sitting on my big toe on top of the covers,” Clyta recalls. “I kicked as hard as I could, and I never did know where that little critter landed.” After a couple of weeks, Clyta went into her living room just after dark and surprised not one but five baby mice scurrying across the floor.

Clyta panicked. “I had known almost all my life that God cared for me, but I had never thought to ask Him for help with this problem,” she says. Frustrated beyond imagination, she raised her voice and her hands toward heaven and implored, "Oh, God, please help me with this mouse problem!" She wasn’t sure she really believed God would… But He had other ideas.

Within minutes of that plea, the doorbell rang. It was a student who had arranged to drop off a research paper Clyta was going to type for him (one of her many part-time jobs). As she opened the door to let him in, a large white and black cat moved stealthily around the door and into her living room. The student seemed as surprised as Clyta was at the sight of the animal. Had it been hanging around her door, waiting for it to open? How odd, even amazing, that a cat had appeared almost immediately after she had prayed.

"Kitty cat," Clyta spoke to her, "Are you the answer to my prayer about the mouse problem?" She had never allowed an animal to stay in her house, but it was a cold night, so she let the cat stay in the garage. “The next morning I let her out and she went on her way,” Clyta recalls. “The following evening I heard her meowing outside the front door. Once again she spent the night in my garage. This happened daily for about two weeks.“

The cat, Clyta noticed, was not especially affectionate or playful, with her or with the children. It seemed, on the contrary, to be on a mission and, although it would accept a saucer of warm milk each evening, it was otherwise completely focused on the presumed task.

The furry visitor arrived each evening like clockwork. And then, one night, the cat did not appear. Amazingly, neither did the mice! “We never spotted another sign of a mouse in the two years we lived in that house,” Clyta says. “Nor did we ever see our angel cat again.”

Did God really send that cat? Was she an angel in disguise, sent to answer Clyta’s prayer? “Did God know that in my time of weakness I needed Him to show me how much He cared for even my "small" problems?” Clyta asks. “ I believe the answer to all of those questions is a resounding "Yes!" God knows and cares and meets our needs, sometimes in most unexpected ways.”

Dr. Harris offers a footnote to this story: "After 18 months, my husband and I were reunited and next summer we will celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary. In many small ways, God strengthened my faith as I believed for the return of my husband."

Copyrighted 2004. For more stories of God's love, visit the website at: www.joanwanderson.com