The Cat Who Went to Heaven

                                      by

                     Elizabeth Coatsworth

                                        Illustrated by

                                  Lynd Ward

                    Newbery Medal Winner - 1931

Coatsworth, E. (1930). The cat who went to heaven.

New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, Inc.

I’ve always been fascinated by the way that life imitates art, and vice-versa.  It certainly proved true when I read this book.

           

I’m a born-and-bred cat-hater.  Like the poor painter in this story and the Japanese society in which he lived so long ago, I always felt that cats were snobby balls of unrequited love on four feet.  But, the painter and I nonetheless ended up with a cat in our house that we didn’t invite, need or want.  And both cats were strays that were brought in by a woman.  The painter’s housekeeper brought in his, and my new bride bought in mine.  When your wife of two weeks leaves her home and family to follow you to a new residence halfway across the country, she’s naturally going to be lonely.  And when a stray kitten comes out of the woods and adopts her, and they both come to you with sad dark eyes, how do you (I) say no?  Simple answer – you don’t.  I didn’t, and neither did the painter.  The painter called his cat “Good Fortune.” We named our cat “Puck” since it came out of the woods like Shakespeare’s impish fairy (but I usually called him “stupid cat”).

Now don’t get me wrong.  There are some ways that life and art do not exactly imitate one another.  The painter’s cat would gently catch a bird and then release it.  Puck would come up to my toe as I was sleeping, gently take it in his mouth…and bury his fangs into it.  The painter’s cat seemed to regularly pay homage to Buddha each morning, while Puck would pay homage to my side of the bed by baptizing it with cat pee.  The painter immortalized his cat by putting it into a painting, while I wanted to immortalize my cat by putting it into a pot of cement.  The painter felt his cat was a child of Buddha, and I felt Puck was a child of Satan.

But despite these exceptions, life does ultimately imitate art.  In time, the painter’s cat died, and the beliefs of the time held that cats did not go to Heaven.  But the painter knew that he did.  He had painted a picture that depicted Buddha with Good Fortune humbly sitting quietly in the corner.  A miracle happened.  After Good Fortune died, the painter saw that in his painting, Buddha was now holding out a loving hand to the cat.  And when Puck died after 11 years of mischief, I found another miracle had happened – we had somehow come to love each other.  And I joined my wife in holding out loving hands to embrace Puck as he slipped away.  I know for certain that he too is in Heaven.  That was five years ago, and as I try to type these words, I can hardly see the keys through my tears.        

PICTURE SOURCES:

brightkidsworld.com
bitsandpieces.us

animalsden.com

assija.deviantart.com

keen.com