Pastoral Letter for the Month

 There were several sightings of The Grumpy Cat during the warmer days of May, at one point a surly tabby face appeared at our back door and peered in, as if to say: “Who on earth left this door open?” 

We tried calling it, speaking to it, and even waving at it, but nothing got any response – in fact she didn’t seem to realise there was anyone there at all, until I got up and starting walking towards her. 

At that point, true to form, she ran away. “I’m not sure she can see and hear all that well,” I said to my wife. “Maybe she’s not bad tempered at all, she’s just constantly stressed.” 

“Maybe,” she said. “The problem is,” I added, “that ‘The Stressed Cat’ doesn’t sound as interesting as ‘The Grumpy Cat’. After all… I have readers to think of.” Over the days that followed I found myself thinking again about The Grumpy Cat. 

When I taught undergraduate criminology I would introduce students to ‘Labelling Theory’, the idea that people often become what they are labelled as, because the way that people react to them makes them behave accordingly. 

This explains why, for instance, someone labelled ‘a thug’ as a child will often end up committing violent crime, or why someone who is consistently told that they are ‘useless’ will start to behave as if they are unable to achieve anything much. 

When I worked as a chaplain in schools I would often have difficult conversations with teachers, in one instance with a head teacher, who were unconsciously labelling their students. An old saying sums it up: “Give a dog a bad name…” “Good grief,” I thought, “does this apply to cats too?” 

Since I started writing about The Grumpy Cat I’ve had lots of people tell me that I should ‘leave it alone’ (I don’t go near it, the chance would be a fine thing), and that I should ‘be nice to that cat’ (I am always, at least, polite to it). Now, though, I was worried that I had been misinterpreting its state of confusion about the world around it for bad temperedness. 

“Do not judge,” Matthew’s gospel warns us, “so that you may not be judged.” “Honestly,” I said to my wife, “I always thought the cat was judging me, I didn’t think it might be the other way around.” Armed with this new insight into my own failings, and now feeling like I better understood the nature of our feline neighbour I resolved to do better. “I should rename her ‘The Misunderstood Cat’,” I said, “she can be a sort of lesson for us all about treating each other with compassion and not leaping to judgement.” 

I was warming to my theme, the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. “After all, in our world people are always calling each other names, and labelling one another – perhaps we all just need to be more understanding of each other.” Another old saying sprang to mind, “Don’t judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.” “I’m going to be nicer to The Misunderstood Cat,” I said, “from now on.” 

Compassion and kindness, I decided should be the main things – after all, they are at the core of our faith. A day or so later I saw my neighbour. “You know, I think I’ve misjudged your cat,” I said. “How’s that then?” he replied. “Well,” I said, “I thought it was just grumpy, but now I realise it can’t see or hear all that well, so it’s probably just stressed.” “It’s been a good lesson for me to learn, actually,” I added. He nodded and looked away for a moment. 

“That cat has been bad tempered since it was a kitten,” he said. 

Simon