My Father In Cat's Skin

Why Zen Equals Zero & How To Root A Broken Leader

Jack’s father comes back as Betty. With a pair of green eyes, Buddha belly, smiling, and sporting a fur coat. As if it were his birth suit, it fits him like a glove. He comes back as she, a fat, gentle cat, to teach Jack that Zen equals Zero, and show him how living is simple, not doing much and not asking much. But one is to first lead a dog’s life on a short leash and eat a whole duvet…

As Betty is born into an environment rich with natural simplicity, becoming the embodiment of a harmonious calmness, it helps Jack face an unexpectedly large amount of peace and emptiness that surrounds him in a secluded area on the fringe of a city.

Reminiscing Jack goes back in time when his father died and they flew back to the old country together for the first time for his burial.

There, after twenty odd years, Jack meets with a few relatives and old friends that survived a gruesome besiege of Sarajevo. To keep themselves warm, ironically they had to cut down most of the trees, as opposed to the Deuteronomy 20:19, where the actual attackers are asked to refrain from it.

Jack also remembers how he and his girlfriend separated prior to that, still keeping in touch within an emotional roller coaster.

Why Zen equals Zero, and some other questions are addressed here with a witty heart touching humor.

In the end, instead of being together, both Jack and his girlfriend end up sharing their lives with cats—he with Betty, she with Casper, as if they were some mystical keepers of the gateway to the fifth dimension of love…