Reading for a project Sara and I are working on, well-known authors seemed like a good place to start. Newbery medalists are often beloved and ought to be trustworthy, since the award goes to the authors of "the most distinguished contributions to American literature for children."
Elizabeth Coatsworth’s The Cat Who Went to Heaven was the 1959 Newbery Medal winner, thus judged the most distinguished contribution to children’s literature written in 1958. The story opens in the home of a starving Japanese artist at an unspecified period of history. The artist is waiting for his housekeeper to come home from the market with their dinner, however meager it might be for the few pennies he had. But instead of bringing home food, the housekeeper brings a cat.
As the artist resigns himself to going hungry, he says, “Well, well, sometimes it is good fortune to have even a devil in the household. It keeps other devils away. Perhaps it may arrange for us to have some food in the house. Who knows? We can’t be worse off than we are.” However, when he sees that the cat is three-colored, he remembers that such cats are very lucky, and he names her Good Fortune.
Soon after the cat arrives, the artist is chosen by the Buddhist priests to make a painting for the temple of Lord Buddha’s death. Next morning, the artist is careful to thank Buddha for his good luck. We learn the story of Prince Siddhartha, later known as Buddha, as the artist vividly imagines the prince’s life so he can understand the Buddha well enough to paint him properly.
His vivid imaginings seem very much like a trance, as he is so exhausted after three days of reliving the Buddha’s life that he sleeps for twenty-four hours, then wakes up knowing exactly how the Buddha should look. After one such imagination session, “Just before dawn, it seemed to him that a great wisdom came to him and he understood why people suffer and also how they can in other lives escape their sufferings. With this knowledge he became the Enlightened One, the Buddha.”
After having painted all the gods and men who came to the Buddha to bid him farewell before he died, the artist has to decide which animals to include of those that had also come to bid the Buddha farewell. In each of the animals he paints, “the spirit of the Buddha had at one time lived, or it had rendered service to him when he was prince on earth.”
After the artist paints each animal, Good Fortune looks at the painting and seems to be asking when she will be included. The artist would like to do so, but everyone knows the cat was the only animal to refuse the teachings of Buddha, so she was the one animal he didn’t bless. Good Fortune cries pitifully, and because the artist loves her, he decides to add a cat even if the priests reject his work and refuse to pay him. When Good Fortune sees this, she is so happy that she can’t live another minute. She falls down dead.
When the priests see what the artist has done, they take the painting away so they can burn it in public. However, the next day, everyone is amazed to see that now, in the painting, the Buddha is holding out a hand to bless the cat.
Though many people like legends, I have never appreciated them. They often seem to answer questions no one is asking, but I suppose they are harmless as long as readers know they are legends. I was waiting for this story to resolve in some way that indicated it was just a legend. However, the last page is one of the housekeeper’s songs that she sings at the end of each chapter.
The Eighth Song of the Housekeeper
This is too great a mystery
For me to comprehend:
The mercy of Buddha
Has no end.
This is too beautiful a thing
To understand:
His garments touch the furthest
Grain of sand.
For me, this story didn’t end with the feeling of a legend or a tall tale or a Greek or Roman myth. Perhaps because, though I know those tales aren’t true, I do know there are millions of people who believe in and worship Buddha. At some point, Christian children will need to know that is so. I believe they should be introduced to that reality with their parents beside them. Mom or Dad ought to be reading with them when they encounter the ideas of trances, demons, and reincarnation. Parents, of course, are free to approach these topics with their children as they see fit.
This book is only 55 pages long, and it has a cute cat on the cover. I think it would look appealing to young readers who are just getting into the chapter-book stage. Therefore, it will not be available on my library shelves for children to discover on their own.