“Good heavens, is that you, Cassie?” one woman called from her car. “Whatever are you doing with that strange animal on your back?”

     “Pet Day,” Gram called back. To Daniel she said, “Old fuddy-duddy. Too prissy to own a good old cat like Feo. She has two sissy little white poodles that look like dish mops and go around with pink bows tied in their hair. I call that cruelty to animals.”

     When they got to the church, Daniel took the backpack and Feo into the classroom. “You’ll be the best pet of them all,” he said, rubbing the cat’s thick yellow fur.

     His classmates showed up with every animal they had signed up to bring. Children in the other classes brought their pets, too.

     Mrs. Brown, the sixth-grade teacher, brought some of the finches she had raised so that the children could see a finch close up. She put the cage on a bookcase to keep the birds safe from the other animals.

     Mrs. Albert told her students to sit on the floor in a large circle. Some of them held their pets in their laps. Some had small cages beside them.

     Feogato stretched out on Daniel’s lap and went to sleep. Some of the children punched each other, giggled, and pointed to Feo.

     Rosa said, “Mrs. Albert, I have never, ever seen a cat sleep so funny with his legs all stuck out like that. And he is very ugly, isn’t he?” Rosa had brought the other cat, a fluffy white creature she called Snowball.

     Mrs. Albert answered, “Well, Rosa, we are all different in one way or another, but God loves each one of us, no matter how we look.”

     Everything went surprisingly smoothly. Debbie let her rabbit out of the cage and one of the puppies got so excited that he made a mess on the floor. But not much of anything else happened.

     When class ended, Mrs. Albert said to Mrs. Brown, “Thank goodness that is over! I think the children enjoyed it, but I was scared to death the whole time that that snake was going to get out of its cage!”

     The teachers agreed that it had all worked out quite well. Mrs. Albert finished straightening up her classroom and headed for the church service. She told Daniel her fear: “I still can’t shake the feeling that something is going to go wrong with Pet Day.”

     In their eagerness to have Pet Day, nobody thought about what to do with the animals during the church service. Some of the children lived close enough to take their pets home before church, but some of the pets had to go to church!

     Gram and Daniel sat down on a cushioned pew with Feo between them. Gram whispered to Daniel, “I’m sure Feo will sleep, but I’m worried about some of those other pets. Anything could happen.”

     Daniel whispered back, “Well, at least the boa constrictor went home. He looked scary.”

     In front of Daniel and Gram, Mrs. Brown sat down with her cage of finches beside her. On the other side of the cage two boys sat down noisily. Mrs. Brown moved the cage a little closer to her.

     “Oh, dear,” Daniel overheard her whisper to Gram, “It’s Jacob and Michael. “I’ll be glad when they grow up. Remember the time they crawled under the pews and popped up in front of the preacher?”

     Gram smiled at the memory. The preacher had said, “Will the mother of these two boys please come down front and escort them back to their seats!”

     What made it so funny was that Jacob and Michael were the preacher’s sons. No wonder Mrs. Brown worried. Those boys could find more devilment to get into than the devil himself.

     “Daniel,” whispered Gram, “keep an eye on those two. I taught them in Church School and sometimes they were so full of mischief, I wanted to snatch them baldheaded.”

     Miss Corrie, the organist, started the music as a signal for everyone to be silent and meditate, but the people kept talking and visiting. So Miss Corrie played louder, determined the congregation would hear the piece she had practiced so hard on.

     But people just talked louder. Daniel could see Miss Corrie pulling out the stops on the organ, making the music even louder. Her feet bounced furiously off the pedals and the big bass notes boomed.

     By service time, the organ thundered so loudly that people yelled at each other. If the choir had not started walking down the center aisle, no one would’ve known it was time for the service to begin.

     Finally, people settled down, opened their hymnbooks to number 469, and began to sing. Gram sang out with all her heart, “Morning has broken. . .”

     Daniel noticed that Gram didn’t have much of a singing voice, but she sang loudly. She had told Daniel earlier that she got disgusted with people who wouldn’t sing in church. “You would think that people who can talk so loud could do a better job of singing. We all ought to make a joyful noise.”

     Daniel decided that the people in this church knew more than one way to make a joyful noise what with the loud talking, the booming organ, and now the singing.

     Gram leaned over to Daniel when the sermon started. “I try to listen, but sometimes I get bored, Daniel. So if you get bored, try counting the organ pipes. We’ll see if we come up with the same number.”

     Daniel thought counting the artificial cherries dangling from the hat of a woman two rows in front of him might be more interesting. Every time the woman moved, the cherries jiggled and Daniel lost count.

     About the middle of the sermon, Daniel felt sleepy. Suddenly he heard a noise and a rustling sound. No…a fluttering sound.

     “Oh, dear me. We’ve got trouble, Daniel,” whispered Gram. “Look!”

     Mrs. Brown’s finches flew around the church, and every soul knew who opened the cage. Jacob smiled like one of God’s angels, and Michael appeared solemn and innocent.

     The birds zipped this way and that over the heads of the congregation. Two of the finches flew to the back of the church and up into the balcony. Two others flew toward the stained glass windows. One of them banged right into the glass and everybody who saw it gasped.

     “Oh, poor little thing. I hope he’s not hurt,” somebody behind Daniel said.

     Suddenly the woman with the cherry hat started waving her arms frantically and yelling “Go away. Go away.” With a great flapping of wings, two finches hurriedly left their hoped-for cherry dinner.

     Daniel looked at Gram. She shook with laughter. Daniel laughed too, as did mostly everyone else.

     One of the finches flew to the top of the organ pipes. “How will they ever catch them?” asked someone sitting across from Gram.

     Poor Mrs. Brown just sat there, almost crying and saying, “Oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness.” Even Jacob and Michael looked worried.

     Finally the birds settled down except for an occasional swoop over someone’s head. Pastor Myers continued his sermon. His message for the day centered around five thousand people fed with a few loaves and fishes.

     “And now for our final hymn, we will sing Amazing Grace, page 280. Please stand.”

   With a rustling of hymnbook pages, the congregation stood. Miss Corrie vigorously played the first chord, but it sounded wrong. She played on gamely, but the music rang offkey. She started over, but some note, a note very important to the familiar tune, seemed missing.

 “What’s wrong with the organ, Gram?”

 “I don’t know, Daniel, but it sounds terrible, like a note is missing.”

     Miss Corrie started the song a third time. Some of the congregation began to sing, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.” But the sound was anything but sweet. The organ music stopped.

     Miss Corrie stood up, then sat down, then stood up again. She looked close to tears. She sat down once more and Daniel could see her hitting one note on the keyboard over and over. But no sound came out. The congregation sat down and waited for someone to tell them what to do next.

     Daniel looked around on the pew, then leaned forward and looked underneath. “Gram, Feo is gone!”

     “Mama, look!” a child shouted. “Look at that cat. He’s climbing the drapery next to the organ pipes.”

     Gram groaned. “Oh, no. As though things aren’t bad enough already. What is that goofy cat up to?”

     Feo clawed his way up the drape and when he reached the top, he put one paw over the nearest organ pipe. Out of the pipe flew one of the finches, its wings flapping wildly. Suddenly the organ wailed repeatedly as Miss Corrie continued to hit the once-silent note. Then she placed her hands in her lap and smiled at the pastor, the organ once again silent.

     When the excited talking died down, the pastor said, “Let us thank God for our beloved animal friends and especially for the cat he sent to our rescue. And now, dear friends, let us once again stand and sing ‘Amazing Grace.’”

     Feo scrambled down from the drape and ambled back to Gram and Daniel. Daniel picked him up. “Well, Feo, I guess you are a hero now.”

     When Daniel crawled into bed that night, he laughed again at the memory of the wild church service with birds flying all over the place. Mom would have loved it, he thought. She never liked to see birds in cages and he bet she’d have been secretly delighted that those finches were free.

     “Mom, I miss you so much. Why did you have to leave us?” No answer came, and the hurt in his heart seemed to grow.