Melissa Toedtman meets Baby Motka, a stray kitten she agreed to undertake, for the primary time within the Community of the Transfiguration convent in Cincinnati, Ohio. The kitten was present in Oklahoma and was dropped at Ohio by members of a Facebook group of clergy with cats. Toedtman is the neighborhood’s pianist. Photo: Sister Diana Doncaster
[Episcopal News Service] Sister Diana Doncaster of the Community of the Transfiguration, an Episcopal non secular order for girls in Cincinnati, Ohio, was one hyperlink in a series of people that helped an deserted kitten in Oklahoma discover a home with a neighborhood pianist, Melissa Toedtman, who performs for the convent’s worship providers.
Sister Diana, who is also a priest, advised Episcopal News Service that on March 22, she and different members of the Facebook group “Clergy with Cats,” a non-public group with some 3,000 members, have been alerted by Jeannie McMahan of Okemah, Oklahoma, to a stray kitten that had been discovered by her neighbor. McMahon, who already had her palms full together with her personal cats, couldn’t take her in, so she posted the kitten’s picture and requested if somebody may provide it a home.
The group, Sister Diana mentioned, is an interfaith, ecumenical and worldwide mixture of ordained individuals. “It’s an amazing group of mutual support, caring, laughter and, of course, cats,” she mentioned.
Motka (high), who belongs to Sister Diana, meets Baby Motka within the convent after the kitten arrived in Cincinnati. Photo: Sister Diana Doncaster
Because group members typically share images of their very own cats, McMahan thought this kitten seemed like one in every of Sister Diana’s cats and gave her the identical identify, Motka, which suggests “Gift of God” in Russian. Sister Diana’s Motka is a Siberian Forest Cat – therefore the Russian identify – and has a protracted, thick coat of black, brown and cream fur. This makes her very fluffy, a trait her kitten namesake shares.
As luck, or maybe windfall, would have it, Toedtman, the pianist, talked about after the Palm Sunday service that she was considering of getting a kitten after the surprising loss of life of her beloved canine. “So I whipped out my phone, showed her the photo of Baby Motka, and it was love at first sight,” Sister Diana mentioned.
To get the kitten from Oklahoma to southern Ohio, the Facebook group jumped into collective motion. Fifty-nine donors contributed to a rescue and journey fund, which paid for Baby Motka’s preliminary photographs and microchip, in addition to journey bills for her helpers. Three individuals every took a leg of the journey as a “kitten train,” driving by means of components of 5 states earlier than arriving in Cincinnati on April 6.
Since Toedtman was away on a long-planned journey, Baby Motka joined the a lot bigger Motka within the convent till she may very well be united together with her new proprietor – or as Sister Diana steered, her new servant – on April 10.
For Sister Diana, the story of this kitten’s rescue and new home is “about God pouring out grace in unexpected ways.” She famous that this effort wasn’t a rigorously deliberate church occasion however somewhat sprang from “one kitten, one Facebook group, some loving and generous people who were moved to help, and a woman who needs a kitten in her life.”
It exhibits, she mentioned, “that God does amazing things through small opportunities.”
—Melodie Woerman is a contract reporter based mostly in Kansas.
