I read A Canticle for Leibowitz many years ago. I don’t recall any cats. I recall it being a pretty good book, and I may read it again eventually, but not to learn anything about cats.
“I read A Canticle for Leibowitz many years ago. I don’t recall any cats. I recall it being a pretty good book, and I may read it again eventually, but not to learn anything about cats.”
The story about the cat occurs when the abbot of the prior of St Lebowitz is trying to talk the woman along with her small child with a broken leg and suffering from radiation sickness out of going to the euthanasia camp after Texarkana (The capital of North America)has been bombed. The priest talks about his cat that was injured and how everyone said he should put it out of its misery. The story is horrific as the boy (Who would become the priest) shot the cat but it wouldn’t die and kept crawling out of the grave and he ended up having to beat it to death with a shovel because the cat simply wanted to die with the dignity that God gave a cat. The point of the story is that pain is a part of life. We consecrate our pain and make it Holy by allowing God to help us deal with it and by acknowledging that it is a temptation to despair and refusing yield to the temptation and glorify God instead.
It is the best chapter of the book. I have wondered when reading it if it was not an even that really happened in the authors life