My Cat Saved My Life

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

Following the prolonged and painful deaths of his parents, Toronto
musician and composer Phillip Schreibman suffered from a debilitating
depression, which held him in “years of despondency and confusion.”
In this attractively produced, self-published book, the author tells how
one spring day in 1987 he saved a kitten, which he named Alice, and how,
through her life and death, Alice taught him much (such as the value of
short “cat naps” and stretching exercises) and gave his life new
meaning. Most of the book deals with the latter transformation, much of
it in sometimes tedious, arcane twaddle. Alice taught him, for example,
“the job of all living creatures: I was appreciating Creation. I was
connecting time and space. I was in the Right Place at the Right Time. I
was nowhere. I was now here.” Alice and he would play on the floor
until “the rug that we lay on was no longer an object that had been
purchased to cover a floor. Now it was a collection of molecules like
us, and together we were all swirling through the universe.”

Slight as it is, with its large print, wide margins and white spaces,
this book should have been shorter. Inside its 30 brief but often
self-indulgent chapters, there is fine potential for an interesting and
delightful magazine article.