Cat in a Box
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Life Lessons from the Cat
By Jean Haynie Stewart

The cat is the only animal which accepts the comforts but rejects the bondage of domesticity.
~Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

Rain. All day. All night. For weeks, sometimes months. It was late April, the beginning of monsoon season. As a young Navy wife accompanying her pilot husband to a base in southern Japan, I quickly learned what the term "monsoon" meant.

We lived off-base in a Japanese house overlooking rice paddies with a sweeping view of the Inland Sea. It was beautiful and quaint, but so cold when wet. The constant gray skies made the world look like an old black-and-white movie, and the cultural differences of Japan added a sense of the surreal. Within weeks, though, it took on a fairytale quality — all because of a cat. (Keep reading)