Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki and Cat

Photo by Mihoko Okamura

Zen Garden

Cyrus & Ida Cartoon

Are You In The Meow?

Allowing Your Cat to Guide You to Enlightenment

What does a cat and a Zen Master have in common?
It is the ability to live in the present time. Told
from a cat’s point of view, Are You In The Meow?
explains to humans how to live more fully “in the
meow” (now).
Using the format of a Zen scroll,

artist Karen LeCocq beautifully illustrates 

the nature of Zen thought in a combination of
photographs, calligraphy and drawings.

Zen Cat

Poe's Uncanny House Cat | Ed Sams

Edgar Allan Poe once belonged to a house cat. Her name was Cattarina. Cattarina lived with the poet, his wife Virginia, and her mother Maria Clemm in snug little houses both in Philadelphia and in New York. The Poe household was so close that none stood on ceremony. The great poet was Eddie, Mrs. Poe was Sissy, and Mrs. Clemm was Muddy. Even Cattarina had nicknames; sometimes she was called Callers, sometimes Kate. Sometimes Cattarina spelt her name with one T, and sometimes with two. That comes from living in a literary household. Sometimes Eddie signed his name E. A. Poe, sometimes Edgar Poe, once as Edgar Perry, as well as Edgar Allan Poe.

No one knows when Cattarina first became a member of the Poe family. The great Poe scholar Hervey Allen places Cattarina with the Poes either late in 1839 or early 1840 when the family moved to Coates Street in Philadelphia and "Catarina, the cat, then in her burgeoning kittenhood, purred on the ample plateau of Mrs. Clemm's lap."

Read more at   Curious Chapbooks & Hysterical Histories

The Black Cat | Based on a novel by Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

"I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat."