As she profiles the cats in her life, Coudert (Go Well: The Story
of a House, 1974, etc.) gleans a raft of life lessons. No idle cat
fancier, Coudert had amassed seven of them. She couldn't help but
think that such neat and graceful animals, creatures without gods
to truckle before, living in their own universes, were onto
something. "Something of worth about the art of living was to be
learned from cats," she reckoned, something about "living fully,
handling restraints equably, thriving on relationships." Something,
doubtless, about always landing on one's feet. So, at her home
along the banks of the Raritan River in the hills of western New
Jersey, Coudert took a long, hard look at each of her cats. There
is Bitty, "undeceivably alive by being in the world instead of
walking through it," who taught her a thing or two about the
benefits of unconditional love. The tormented and withdrawn Poppy
allows Coudert to digress upon one of her favorite topics - the
difficulties of one person changing another's self-defeating
behavior. Socksie, with as tough a start in life as Poppy, chooses
not to give up on the future and remains open to the friendship of
a persistent person. And Sweet William, of gentle disposition and
thunderously beautiful, has a self-awareness that brings Coudert's
mind to the benefits of meditation, where the internal loops of
rationalizations and justifications are broken, the defenseless
self exposed for a moment. There is nothing particularly new here,
or with the other three cats, but to put such musings in a feline
context gives them a benign freshness. If at times Coudert's
ministerings have a quaintly vapid air about them, at the very
least they feel genuine: little homilies, tendered with best
wishes. (Kirkus Reviews)
Jo Coudert did not start out with seven cats. She began with just
one, Kate, a gorgeous tortoiseshell Persian who knew exactly who
she was - the apple of her mistress's eye. But as Jo a New Yorker,
began spending weekends, and eventually all her time, at GoWell, a
small house in rural New Jersey, she began to acquire cats - or,
more accurately, they acquired her: strays, waifs, orphaned
kittens, homeless toms, and cats who came to dinner and never left.
Seven Cats and the Art of Living tells about the cats - Kate,
Poppy, Chester, Socksie, Trot, Bitty, and Sweet William - who
shared GoWell with Jo and her dog Freebie. Their stories are
instructive, quietly inspiring, written with simplicity, and a joy
to read. From Poppy, whose early mistreatment gave her a mistrust
of the world and all creatures in it, to abandoned Bitty, whose
innate cheerfulness made every day an adventure and every human a
friend, these are cats that will capture our hearts. But more
important, through the lessons they teach about forming character,
choosing attitudes, daring to love, taking risks, feeling fear or
acting with courage, and living in the past or living in the
moment, these are cats that can enrich our lives.
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