“Get her back inside! Get her back inside!” Tim and Sara screamed at the same time.

As usual, I had just let Pobby out the basement door and into the back yard one last time before we went to bed. By the way, Pobby was our dog that chewed on my Bible in my story/article “Eating the Word.”

Since Tim and Sara were upstairs, I couldn’t ask them why they yelled that or why they were so upset. All I could do was call for our dog. “Pobby! Come back inside Pobby!”
She didn’t answer my call.

So there I stood in my pajamas at the basement door. I was tempted to go out into the back yard to see what was causing all the commotion, but I decided to stay inside. What if there was some kind of wild animal out there with Pobby? I had nothing to fend it off with except my furry house shoes.

I shut the door and ran upstairs. Tim and Sara were standing at the window looking over the backyard. “What in the world is wrong?”

“There’s a skunk in the backyard with Pobby!”

I looked out the window. Yep, there it was. Mamaw Jo called them “Pole Cats” from time to time. One thing is for certain, The Good Lord has blessed East Tennessee with an abundance of them.

This little pole cat was walking around the back yard like it owned it. And there was Pobby sniffing as she walked behind it. Fortunately, she didn’t bark or growl at it. She just sniffed the ground. Even as she kept her distance from the pole cat, I envisioned it lifting its tail and spraying her. I also imagined the smell. What would we do? A skunk sprayed dog would stink up the whole house and us with it.

Instead of spraying Pobby, the pole cat waddled over to the old dog house and crawled underneath it. That dog house was from our previous dog. We just never got around to getting rid of it. Thank goodness for that. At the moment it was keeping Pobby safe and not stinky.

Or so we thought. Pobby politely walked up to the edge of the dog house and continued sniffing.

“We need to do something before Pobby gets sprayed,” I said.

“I’m not going out there. Do you want to go?” Tim asked.

Poor Pobby. Nobody wanted to go out to her defense. So we all huddled at the window and prayed for her not to get sprayed. A couple of times she got very close to where the pole cat crawled underneath the house.

We all screamed in anticipation, but thankfully, Pobby still didn’t get sprayed.

For some reason, she gave up on getting to the pole cat. She did her thing and ran back toward the basement door. I let her back and quickly slammed the door shut.

“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” 2 Timothy 1:17 (KJV)

While this verse is about how we are to live each day as Believers, I also think it’s a powerful witnessing tool. How we live our lives and deal with problems are living testimonies to the lost world.

I believe Pobby’s lack of fear is why she didn’t get sprayed. Since she was an inside dog, she had never been around a pole cat before and didn’t know what it was capable of doing to her. Instead of panicking or being aggressive, she kept a sound doggie mind.

As for that pole cat, we didn’t see it or any others in our backyard for a while. I wonder if it went back to its family and said, “Hey ya’ll, there’s a crazy dog that lives in that house.”