The word is getting out that something awesome, mystic, spiritual, or just God-orchestrated, naturally supernatural is in the raw, unprocessed honey in our area.
Now it’s also true that I am acquainted with the bees that made the honey to which I am referring, and know their keeper personally, but that is not the point at all here. The point is there is healing in raw honey.
Now a lot of people have heard of Manuka honey, a product of New Zealand, highly touted (and rightly so) for its healing qualities. But wouldn’t it be nice if there was something a little more readily available?
I have no idea how our honey measures up to Manuka. I do know it healed the cat and the neighbor’s kid. So here is the story.
We have a pretty, black cat.
Well that is not exactly true.
We are in a unique, typically one-sided, off-again, on-again relationship with a scarred and crazy feline, who loves to sit on our porch in the sunshine and goes nuts drooling when we pet her. Yep, our cat drools! Anyway, we call her Hagar because she was cast out and landed on our steps.
One day Hagar showed up with a cut or bite on her backbone close to her tail. It was swollen and hot with fever.
My wife Deanna said, “You need to take the cat to the vet.”
I thought, “That cat is not worth two hundred dollars. We could buy ten cats for that, and besides I don’t want cat hair in my truck, and she is worse than the dogs about clawing and scratching, so no way I am taking that cat to the vet.”
Then quite naturally I started to feel guilty and sorry for the cat and thought what a clod I was for not taking care of the poor kitty, so, I sighed and thought, there goes $200!
The next morning rolled around, and Deanna prepared to leave for school. As she stepped out on the porch, I heard this loud mewing and hissing and gagging and retching, and it wasn’t the cat! It was Deanna!
Like any concerned husband hearing his wife retching and contorting on the front porch before dawn, I waited in my easy chair drinking my coffee and hoping that whatever was out there didn’t get in the house.
Finally, Deanna quit making all that noise and fell through the front door and just looked at me with one of those looks.
“Didn’t you hear me retching and hollering on the front porch?”
To which I replied, “Huh?”
She half-closed her eye lids in that, “Don’t-you-even look,” and said for me to come see the cat’s wound, the one she told me about yesterday… the one I had said would be fine… that we didn’t have to take it to the vet. Well, that cat’s wound had ruptured! And puss was oozing out, thick and white, dripping all over the front porch.
I stumbled out onto the front porch in my drawers holding my blanket and my coffee cup and looked at the poor cat. Deanna was right; it was a nasty sight, and sister kitty was hurting and mewing, and I knew I had to do something. Shooting the cat immediately came to mind. I didn’t mention it, but it certainly came to mind. But then I remembered – I have raw, unprocessed honey by the gallon sitting in my kitchen.
Honey is known for its antibiotic qualities. I followed up on that thought by Googling the healing power of honey and discovered Napoleon Bonaparte and Aristotle and King Solomon himself all agreed that honey has powerful, healing qualities. So, what did I have to lose? The honey healer to the rescue!
I found the longest pair of rubber gloves in the house. I mean this was a cat we were talking about: a touchy, angry hurting relative of the panther family with retractable claws an inch and a half long. Besides I didn’t want to get any of that nasty, oozy, infected fluid anywhere near me. Considering that, I thought rubber gloves might not be enough, so, I put on my beekeeper suit, rubber boots, and hazmat breathing filtered mask.
Kitty, here I come prepared to plaster honey all over your backside!
I got two tablespoons of honey in a plastic jar and I thought, “Is that going to be enough? Maybe not…” I grabbed the 8 oz. jar on the table thinking this should do the trick and walked out the door prepared for emergency cat surgery.
The cat was not impressed, but she was also too sick to put up much fuss. I carefully grabbed her and gently soothed her and started to wonder, “Now how am I going to do this? Should I just dab it on her and be done? Should I take her to the kitchen sink and dip her in a bowl of honey? Or should I, as the Google Cat Healing site suggested, “express the wound.”
Now the phrase “express the wound” sounds a heck of a lot better than what you actually have to do. What you have to do is press down on the feverish mass of infected cat yuck and push it out while holding a screaming panther with two-inch claws (they grew) all the while fighting off your own gag reflex, desperately trying not to vomit in your breathing apparatus.
Once again, the thought came, “Just shoot the cat.” I pondered it and immediately discounted it. Then it came back; I discounted it again. An hour later, I had finally decided not to shoot the cat. I put my bee suit back on, my gun away, and marched back out onto the porch to plaster the cat’s rear with honey.
It was not an easy job. It sounded kinda like, “Here Kitty, Kitty.”
HISS….
“Here Kitty, Kitty.”
Hiss, HISS.
“Now, dang it cat! I’m trying to help you! Get your fat butt over here! Hiss… Gotcha! Be still!”
Meoowwwww!!!
“Stop squirming!”
Hiss Hiss!
“Oh, that is nasty! Oh no! (nauseous belching noise) ERP, oh gag…”
Meow, hiss!
“Oh, that is NASTY! Oh gosh!” Gag gag erp , sigh….. long breath…
“Awwww ewww!”
There it was done.
The cat’s backside was covered with white expressed puss that looked like a combination of mayonnaise and snot covered in honey. I was sick to my stomach, and the cat was squalling like it had lost its mother to a dump truck. But the deed was done.
Deanna came home that evening and immediately asked, “Well, what did the vet say?”
I stumbled a bit, considered making something up, and just decided to tell the truth. “Well I prayed about it,” (God forgive me for lying) “and felt like I should research what the vet would actually do, and then see if I could apply honey to the wound. So, I did, and I think the cat is better.” (I had not actually seen the cat. I just assumed that it had crawled under the house and died. If it was in heaven, it was therefore better).
Deanna said, “Oh aren’t you smart! That is awesome!” (What a wonderful wife I have).
“Here Kitty Kitty!” Hagar sashayed up to Deanna purring like a kitchen garbage disposal, and Deanna said, “Oh my goodness! The infection is almost gone! This is amazing.”
The next day Deanna took the cat to the vet anyway, and the veterinarian told her that the honey had sucked the infection out, and its antibiotic qualities were healing the wound nicely. The vet’s helper also said she had learned something new and promised to try honey on her horses the next time they got hurt. “Tell your husband he did a great job and to apply the honey one more time.” (Yeah right, like that was going to happen!)
So, you can see from firsthand experience that raw, unprocessed honey is an amazing medicine.
Sorry, forgot to tell you about the neighbor’s kid. Bottom line, allergies that regular meds couldn’t help. They started a tablespoon of raw honey a day and the child got well. She was so healthy and could breath so much better she grew an extra nostril. Honey is amazing!
William David Ellis, Author 