Cat and Zen: Haiku & Mindfulness for Quiet Moments

Some things cannot be explained. They can only be noticed.

A cat blinks. Rain arrives without asking permission. The last leaf lets go before the others.

Cat and Zen is a collection of 64 haiku moving through the four seasons — from the first warmth of spring to the longest night of winter. Each poem is offered in English and Japanese, accompanied by a single mindfulness prompt: not an explanation, but an invitation to pause.

The cat is this book's quiet teacher. She does not try to be present. She simply is. In watching her — and the world she moves through — these poems ask nothing more than what she asks of herself: to notice, fully, what is already here.

For readers who sit with tea before the window. For those awake at 3 a.m. For anyone who has ever watched a cat watch something invisible, and felt, for a moment, that they almost understood.