This book makes me weep every time I read it, for the best cat in the world, and all the cats I have loved, and the lush picture of the afterlife that Cynthia Rylant paints for children and pet-parents.

Heaven, Rylant tells us, is a place reached across a journey through “a field of sweet grass” where there are butterflies and crickets to leap and dance after.

“A cat may be late in getting to Heaven…” – of course they are – but an angel waits up until they come home to let them in through a yellow door, and “give her a kiss” and a bowl of milk.

Heaven is full of all the things cats love, trees – “but no one gets stuck in a tree anymore – if a cat wants down, she will fly!” Kitty toys, buttons, mice, and a storm of catnip. Angel laps where cats can rest and delicious foods that are served, of course on “God’s kitchen counter”.

And after dinner, there is plenty of room for all the cats on God’s great bed. While God walks in his garden “with a good black book” (“Garden Tips” the cover reveals), a kitty sleeps on his head, and there are plenty of clouds where cats can sit and gaze off into space.

From there she can “watch the old house where once she lived and wandered, and the people who loved her inside.”

All cats know the way to heaven, Rylant promises, where they can “curl up with God in the sky.”

The poetry of Rylant’s vision is perfectly matched with the beautiful child-like illustrations. This is the perfect book to gift a child (or an adult) who is facing life with a cat-shaped hole in their heart.

Just be careful, it’s a tear-jerker.

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Today’s post is dedicated to the man who led the company I grew up at, Len Riggio. I doubt that Len liked cats – I really don’t know but I can only assume, based on his extensive art collection that any self-respecting cat would have destroyed, that he probably did not – but I know he found his way to a heaven filled with books and music and art… RIP.