Cats Are XXL Kittens, but Cats are Miniature Lions

I was cleaning up my hard drive from unwanted junk when I stumbled across a batch of photographs I took from my previous (sniff!) mobile phone. They were taken during our stint in Tarlac City last January 2010:

What particularly amused me about this pair was how old the kitten was already. I mean, just look at the picture - HE'S BIG. And he's still acting like a kitten, still not weaned from his mom! I actually tried several times to separate him from his mother (and got some scratches from the effort), but still he'd run to her side like the big baby he is.

Looking at him still sucking vigorously at his mom's underside puts a sly smile on my face, because somehow it reminds me of how many people like myself act the same way (okay, maybe not the literal feeding part, because that would be outright disgusting for our age).

I personally am not against childish behavior - I sincerely believe it is a necessary outlet for adults to indulge in such whims from time to time. Playfulness, after all, should not be a characteristic limited to childhood. But childish dependency - that's a different thing.

Yes. I say childish, not childlike. As the Bible teaches us, we need childlike faith - marked by an innocent dependence on God. That is virtuous. It does not deny, neglect or reject responsibility nor accountability; it merely clings to Him. Childish faith, on the other hand, is emphasized by a lack of maturity wherein we throw all responsibilities back at Him, expecting Him to pick up the mess after us all the time.

What piqued my interest about the whole experience was that the pets' owner told me a story about how the same over-sized kitten had supposedly killed a snake (yes, the venomous type, and it was big enough to kill!) in the homeowner's backyard a few weeks back. How an inexperienced kitten was able to do just that is up to your imagination... Maybe he magically transformed into Heman's Battle Cat. But the simple fact remains: he did it, without his mother's aid.

And still he lazily prefers nursing at his mother's mammary glands.

Come to think of it, I wonder if I'm no different from that kitten after all.