This came through another site, and is not necessarily about religion per se, but it contains a great deal of truth!
Clint
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DOGS vs CATS
Have you ever realized that children are like dogs"”loyal
and affectionate,
but teenagers are like cats... It's so easy to be a dog
owner.
You feed it, train it, boss it around. And yet it still
puts its head on
your knee and gazes at you as if you were a Rembrandt
painting and bounds
indoors with enthusiasm when you call it.
Then around age 13, your adoring little puppy turns into
a cat.
When you tell it to come inside, it looks amazed, as if
wondering who died
and made you emperor.
Instead of dogging your doorsteps, it disappears.
You won't see it again until it gets hungry.
Then it pauses on its sprint through the kitchen long
enough to turn its
nose up at whatever you're serving.
When you reach out to ruffle its head, in that old
affectionate gesture, it
twists away from you, then gives you a blank stare, as
if trying to remember
where it has seen you before.
You, not realizing that the dog is now a cat, think
something must be
desperately wrong. It seems so antisocial, so distant.
It won't go on
family outings.
Since you're the one who raised it, taught it to fetch
and stay and sit on
command, you assume that you did something wrong.
Flooded with guilt and fear, you redouble your efforts to
make your pet behave.
Only now you're dealing with a cat, so everything that
worked before now
produces the opposite of the desired result.
Call it, and it runs away. Tell it to sit, and it jumps
on the counter.
The more you go toward it, with open arms, the more it
moves away.
Instead of continuing to act like a dog owner, you should
learn to behave like
a cat owner. Put a dish of food near the door, and let
it come to you. Sit still,
and it will come, seeking that warm, comforting lap it
has not entirely forgotten.
Be there to open the door for it.
And just remember...
One day your grown-up child will walk into the kitchen,
give you a big kiss
and say, "You've been on your feet all day. Let me get
those dishes for you."
Then you'll realize your cat is now a dog again!
Received from: Just For Grins
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Dogs and cats
