Uber Chronicles #3: “Somebody Check On Mika”

How a Ten-Minute Uber Ride Turned into a Rescue Mission for a Cat I Didn’t Know Existed

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Three college-aged young women climbed into the car.
They were friendly, energetic, and immediately started talking among themselves.

It was only a ten-minute ride.
What could possibly happen in ten minutes?
Apparently, a great deal.

Within moments, the conversation turned to someone named Mika.
And honestly, my heart started breaking for the poor guy.
They talked about how socially awkward he was.
How the other guys seemed to bully him.
How they felt sorry for him because he had recently had a bunch of shots.
How they had found him wrapped up in a blanket on one of their beds.
How they had found him lying outside against the house.
How the guys would walk up, poke him in the belly, and he would just lie there and groan.

I sat quietly, listening.
The more they talked, the more concerned I became.

Who was this poor young man?
Why was nobody helping him?
Why were they all just standing around watching this happen?

At one point they said they were happy because Mika was finally starting to branch out and become more social. But they hoped the other guys would stop bullying him.

Now my concern level was reaching uncomfortable territory.
I wasn’t sure if I was listening to the newest episode of Mean Girls or some strange modern version of Lord of the Flies.

Part of me wanted to interrupt.
Part of me wanted to ask questions.
Part of me wanted to offer life advice to a young man I had never met.
And part of me was mentally preparing a speech about friendship, compassion, and maybe limiting the number of shots someone receives in a single evening.

Then came the sentence that changed everything.

One of them said,
“We’re hoping things get better as Mika grows out of the kitten stage and into the cat stage.”

Silence.

My brain immediately slammed on the brakes.

Kitten stage?
Cat stage?

Wait.

Mika is a cat?
A cat.
The victim of my ten-minute rescue mission was a cat.

Suddenly every story made perfect sense.
The blanket.
The bed.
The belly pokes.
The groaning.
The shots.

Everything.
I started laughing.

Then I told them they had done me a huge favor by clarifying that Mika was a cat because for the last ten minutes I had been imagining some poor young man named Mika—possibly from another country—being relentlessly tormented by his so-called friends while everyone stood around watching.

The car erupted in laughter.
They thought it was the funniest thing they had heard all day.

I was relieved.

Mika was not in danger.
Mika was simply a kitten.

A kitten, I learned, whose full name is Mikhael Drago.

Naturally.
As I dropped them off, they told me it was the best Uber ride they had ever had.

I drove away laughing at myself.

Sometimes we hear a story and fill in all the blanks ourselves.
We create entire narratives before we actually know what’s happening.
A name.
A few details.
A handful of assumptions.
And before long we’ve built a complete picture that exists only in our own minds.

Thankfully, this story ended with a cat.
Not every story does.

Maybe that’s why it’s worth slowing down before we jump to conclusions.

It’s amazing how often the truth is completely different from what we imagined.

And sometimes…
the truth has whiskers.

After-Thoughts from the Mind of PB

Sometimes life is a lot like my concern for Mika.
We hear part of the story.
We see part of the picture.
We experience a moment, a setback, a disappointment, or a season we don’t understand.

And before long, we’ve filled in all the blanks ourselves.
We assume the worst.
We imagine outcomes that haven’t happened
We carry worries that aren’t ours to carry.

The reality is that God sees the whole story while we often see only a small piece of it.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. (Isaiah 55:8)

That day, I spent ten minutes creating an entire narrative about a young man named Mika who didn’t even exist.

How often do we do the same thing with our circumstances?
How often do we assume we know what God is doing when we’ve only seen one chapter?

Faith doesn’t require us to have all the answers.
It simply invites us to trust the One who does.

And sometimes, when the whole story is finally revealed, we discover that what we feared most was never the reality at all.

Sometimes the answer is much better than we imagined.

And sometimes…
the answer is a cat named Mikhael Drago.

Reflection Question: Where in your life might you be filling in the blanks instead of trusting God with the parts of the story you cannot yet see?

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