A Cat’s Tale: One Cat’s Search for the Meaning of Life
Theresa Lindemann
Peppertree Press
Reviewed by Patty Inglish, MS, 9^th Dan
 

A Cat’s Tale is a soft cover children’s book with an uplifting message, encouraging us to find our true calling in life, but to gather some life experience in order to give us the breadth of opportunity from which to garner the nature of our calling. Every human being and animal has a calling in his ir her life. Some individuals know that this is an Assignment from the Universe while others know without knowing that it is a gift from God. Some people feel useless and pointless in their lives, waiting for that calling to appear to them.  Others take the initiative stoked by their restless, impatient wanderlust; they go out on their own Path of Seeking and are met their by their Destiny. This is not predestination, but Purpose. The fine little cat does this and we are glad with him.
 

Little cat Tom goes out into the Universe. He meets four friends, an angel, and a holy man. The friends are Friend of Water, Friend of Earth, Friend of Wind and Sky and Friend of Fire. The angel is a cat angel with a message and the holy man is nameless, for he needs no name.
 
The naming of all cats Tom is much like the Black Muslim custom of taking the last name of X until a true surname of the new faith is found. In a similar fashion, Tom becomes Sage Tom at the naming of a cat angel after walking, swimming and flying across the Universe to live with an unnamed holy man. For this man, a name is not important because his identity comes from the holy. Such a man does not need a name. The purpose of all? Love. — Love as instructed by all the major global religious practices and philosophies, many of which are hinted in the text – Zen traditions, Confucianism filial piety, teaching, sharing, Native American reverence for nature and the spirit in all living things, the four elements, the Great Commission to love others as one must love oneself. Sage Tom becomes Love and a two-way conduit for the action of love, and lives happily in the temple of the holy man, dispensing love to children and other visitors. We all should have such a fortuitous living: knowing our individual calling, accepting it from its source, acting upon, it and living in the moment of holiness.
 

This book contains beautiful illustrations, which would make an attractive coffee table book if the volume were printed in that manner. It would take a revered place on the table with other such books of arts and letters. In any form, it is a volume that will introduce children to comparative religions and spark the desire to find one’s own purpose in life, knowing that a large part of it is Love. This Love is to be shared among people, pets, and the world.