The Wallace family cat, Jonesy, had kittens the other night, two of them. Surely a small litter by any standard. But then again, she is only ten months old herself.

For the past few weeks, I was not really sure what to expect. After all, we were not exactly planning on this. In fact, her appointment with the vet was thwarted by extreme circumstances, and she got pregnant shortly thereafter.

As you can imagine, once the news got out to our friends and neighbors, there was no shortage of opinion. Some were saying that she was too young to have kittens. Some said that the offspring would be deformed. Others, stillborn. But as it is, the two tiny critters in the towel-lined Amazon box are neither.

In fact, they are beautiful, and I am not the only one who thinks so. Their mommy cannot get enough of them either. She may have spent the last ten months absorbed in her own little kitty-cat world, but those days have come to an end. She is now crazy about her babies, nursing and protecting them as though she were made by God to do it.

And from where I stand, at a respectful distance, she was.

Needless to say, all of this activity has got me thinking. Specifically, it has me thinking about the girls who come to our local Crisis Pregnancy Center. About the ones who were not exactly planning on this. About the no shortage of opinion regarding what they should do. About abortion, adoption, and keeping the child. And about what it must be like to have a baby while feeling like one.

Most of all, though, it has me thinking about the role of the Church in all of this. About the opportunity it presents us with to tell these scared and confused young girls about the grace and redemption of our Lord ... as though we were made by God to do it.