The Cat Who Went to Heaven

There were some things I liked very much in The Cat Who Went to Heaven, by Elizabeth Coatsworth, and some things that I was very dubious about.

I liked the descriptions of the cat, Good Fortune, as well as all of the deftly portrayed animals that the unnamed Japanese artist thought about for his painting of the Buddha's death scene. Coatsworth uses simple yet poetic words in her short story (is this the shortest of the Newbery winners? I think it must be, except perhaps for one of the poetry collections - it's only 74 pages!):

So the old woman put down the basket and opened the lid. Nothing happened for a moment. Then a round, pretty, white head came slowly above the bamboo, and two big yellow eyes looked about the room, and a little white paw appeared on the rim. Suddenly, without moving the basket at all, a little cat jumped out on the mats, and stood there as a person might stand who scarcely knew if she were welcome. Now that the cat was out of the basket, the artist saw she had yellow and black spots on her sides, a little tail like a rabbit's, and that she did everything daintily (p. 10).

She is like new snow dotted with gold pieces and lacquer; she is like a white flower on which butterflies of two kinds have alighted...(p. 11).

I did wonder why the cat had such a short tail. Was this some genetic thing, like a Manx cat, or was it cropped or lost in an accident? Frustratingly, my library book had a sticker over the rear end of the cat shown on the cover, but it did appear that the pencil illustrations by Lynd Ward and Jael inside this 1990 edition showed a short-tailed cat. When I went to look at what I think was the original cover art, this is what I saw:



Every single copy of this cover image that I can find on the internet has the Newbery medal stuck on the cat's tail! Is it a tiny nub or what? I think if the cat had a normal tail it would extend out beyond the medal.

Now for the things I didn't like about this quiet little story that a lot of people find so charming and inspirational.

I really wondered about its authenticity (ooh, big literary word alert), and question how much of Coatsworth's portrayal of Japanese culture and Buddhism is accurate. I did some Googling and didn't turn up a legend about cats spurning the Buddha's blessing on the first couple pages of hits. Does anyone know if Coatsworth made this story up out of whole cloth, or is it really a Japanese legend? The fact that schools and homeschoolers alike use this book to fulfill a reading or social studies requirement on world cultures and/or religions makes this question rather important, I think.

In a similar vein, the Newbery Book Discussion Group at the Allen County Public Library ranked The Cat Who Went to Heaven 81st out of 87 winners, noting that it was:

Blessedly short. Some of us were bothered by seeming cultural insensitivity in the title, since the book is a story about an artist and the Buddha...So, shouldn't it be "The Cat Who Went to Nirvana"?

Finally, I absolutely hated the book's ending. I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't read it, but if you want to read about the part that bothered me, highlight the following paragraph.

The cat dies because she's so happy? WTF? What kind of ending is that for a children's story? I don't demand "and they lived happily ever after" for all kid's books, but isn't it a little disturbing to suggest that "pure joy" will kill you?

Anyway, it was a mostly enjoyable story, but not one I'll probably ever re-read or recommend to anyone but hard-core cat lovers, who might enjoy the gentle creature that Coatsworth portrays as colorfully as the artist in the story.

The Cat Who Went To Heaven

This very short book written by Elizabeth Coatsworth took me a little less than an hour to carefully read. The book is set in Japan and talks of an artist struggling to sell his paintings. One day his housekeeper brings him a cat. At first the artist is very angry at the housekeeper for bringing the cat because they are considered unlucky and even evil.
A priest comes to the artists house and tells him that he is the chosen one to paint a picture of the Buddha's death which if accepted would be hung in the temple. The artist spends the next several days living the life of buddha in his mind. He paints the buddha and then all the animals that visit him at his death. Each time he paints an animal the cat comes and looks at the painting with a longing to be in it.
The artist is torn between painting the cat or leaving it out of the picture because of their bad reputation. The ending was pretty neat when the cat was finally accepted.
I liked the brief description of the life of Siddhartha and the many animals he took the form of along with the short stories of them. There are also eight songs which the housekeeper sings that are kind of cool.
This book was probably not a favorite but it wasn't bad. I think it had a deeper meaning to it than I picked up on. I think children could be taught a little about the buddha by it.

The Cat Who Went to Heaven (1931)

The most interesting thing about this slender book might be its author. Born in 1893, Elizabeth Coatsworth's family loved to travel, so she had the opportunity to venture through Europe and Egypt extensively before the age of 18. In her early 20s, she went on an 18-month journey through Asia on her own. Her travels inspired much of her writing. Of the 90 children's books that she wrote (between her 30s and her 80s), The Cat Who Went to Heaven, which won the Newbery in 1931, is apparently one of the few that remains in print.

Written in the style of a Japanese folk tale, the only character in the book with a proper name is a cat called Good Fortune. Adopted by the housekeeper of an impoverished artist, the cat's presence in their home begins to, of course, change their fortune. As they sacrifice to feed the cat as a member of the family, the artist wins a commission to paint a group of animals receiving the Buddha's blessing for a temple. The conundrum is that house cats are considered unlucky, even malicious, creatures. So the artist must wrestle with either creating a painting of animals without a cat (when it seems to him that the cat has saved his life), or including a cat in the painting, thus risking being ostracized.

This is an interesting take on Buddhist teaching, but a very Western one, if you know anything about the religion. A quick 74 pages with several illustrations and a few poems, it's possible to read aloud and might be preferable to kids that way because some of the antiquated and high-handed language the characters use. The morals just sound too much like morals, and many contemporary writers are much better at being clever and discreet.