(6/5/2024)
We'll Prescribe You A Cat is a unique collection of stories about disparate and often soul-weary characters needing help and who wind up at the Kokoro Clinic For The Soul. The clinic doctor's remedy for each visitor is a prescription for a clinic-selected cat for a specific number of days. Lives are altered not just for the patient, but for others who share time with the little healer - the cat. Hearts are re-opened, possibilities appear, and the future may seem clearer and brighter. The collage of touching vignettes often interweaves the characters into each other's stories as well as gradually provides answers to the overall mystery about this clinic, the young doctor, the reticent nurse, the prescribed beguiling cats, and even the strange building.
I will long remember these cats, their lives, and the love and devotion between them and their new human companions, but also for their often-painful backstories. I easily could have been someone at the clinic's door. After my husband died, I was urged to take in a broken-down, old, horribly-ill, burr-covered cat found in a field. I did just that. I had been given my clinic prescription that day. Since then, my world has been filled with love, a lot of fur, and beautiful feline companionship all these years. This book conveys and captures all of it. Once it is published, I will be giving it, with its delightful cover, as gifts not only to cat lovers, but to others with this inscription: "Don't worry. Cats can solve most problems."
I am grateful to Berkley Publishing Group, NetGalley, and BookBrowse for the early access to this book. This opinion is all my own.