The Dalai Lama's Cat and the Power of Meow (The Dalai Lama's Cat 3)

Responding to the attention, I looked up. And meowed.

All three of them laughed.

“The power of meow?” suggested Serena as Mrs. Trinci stroked me.

“Exactly,” said His Holiness, chuckling. “It is the pathway to well-being and to discovering our own true nature.”

That night, the Dalai Lama attended a session in the temple. By the time he returned the moon had risen, casting the courtyard in ethereal silver.

I always love how the moon transforms a familiar scene into something quite magical. If daylight belongs to the dogs, then we cats are creatures of the night. We are the feline yin to the canine yang. Denizens of a time of mystery and wonder. For my own part, I enjoyed nothing more than sitting in nocturnal reverie beneath the brooding Himalayas, their icy peaks coolly gleaming in the starlight.

That particular evening, I noticed a curiously beguiling new scent carried on the breeze. It wasn’t a fragrance I had ever detected before, and there was something powerfully compelling about it. My nostrils flared. I had no doubt that its origin was a flower or plant of some kind. But where was it coming from exactly? And why had I never noticed it before? As I lifted my face to the wind, I knew it was a mystery that deserved further investigation.

But not just yet. Just then, His Holiness returned to the room. Seeing me sitting in the darkness, I think he, too, sensed something of the magic of that moment. Instead of turning on the light, he came over to where I sat looking out the open window to the brightly lit temple. He eased himself down next to me, and for a few moments the two of us became watchful observers.

Snatches of conversation rose from the courtyard as monks made their way from the temple back to their residence, where orange squares of light flickered to life. A cooling breeze stirred, bringing with it ribbons of night jasmine—along with that enchanting new scent. Over at the temple, the lights were being turned off one by one. First the roof and the auspicious symbols that decorated it suddenly fell into darkness. Then the steps leading up to the entrance and the intricately colored doorway became instantly monochrome.

For a moment, all that remained lit was a solitary gold lotus flower—the Buddhist symbol of transcendence, renunciation, and hope—on the front of the temple. It floated on the unseen surface of an ocean of shadow.

“A good reminder, my little Snow Lion,” murmured the Dalai Lama. “Lotus plants grow in poor conditions. Their roots are in the mud, sometimes dirty swamps. But they rise above that. Their flowers are very beautiful. Sometimes when we have problems we, too, can use our difficulties to create something we may not even have considered before. We can turn our suffering into the cause of extraordinary growth.”

Like so much else of what His Holiness said, his words could be understood in different ways. I knew he was making not only a general observation but offering a deeply personal message—one that referred not only to my own recent challenges but to Mrs. Trinci’s, too. And, more important, to the fresh direction in which they could propel us. Instead of believing my infestati

on to be a cause of nothing but biting misery, I was beginning to see that it seemed it could become fuel for personal growth.

CHAPTER TWO

Something happens to cats after we have enjoyed a delicious meal. Call it a feline sugar hit. A rush of good feeling. Abandoning our usually sedentary nature, we transform into crazed beasts who thunder down corridors, spring from one piece of furniture to another, or pounce from behind half-closed doors to attack the shoelaces of unsuspecting passersby. It is as though we are temporarily possessed.

That, at least, is my excuse, dear reader—and the only explanation I can offer for my entirely unplanned global TV debut.

To be fair, I had no way of knowing that His Holiness was receiving visitors that particular afternoon. Nor that he was being interviewed, let alone by one of America’s most famous media moguls.

All I knew was that, a few minutes after gorging myself on a favorite treat of diced chicken liver, I felt that sudden, primal explosion of energy. Having made my way back to the suite of rooms I shared with the Dalai Lama, I was driven by an overpowering compulsion to do something completely mad. To run amok like the rabid jungle cat that, at that particular moment, I felt I was.

Bursting through the door of the room in which His Holiness received visitors, I tore up the carpet as I raced toward the sofa opposite where he was sitting. I ripped into its fabric as I scrambled up its side, a savage creature clawing its way up a perilous cliff. Then with a final, frenzied burst, I launched myself off one arm of the sofa, leaping toward the other.

It was only at this point that I realized the sofa was occupied by a beautiful blond-haired woman. She was halfway through a sentence, and my unscheduled, airborne appearance caught His Holiness’s guest completely by surprise.

You know how, when something truly unexpected happens, time can seem to slow down? Well, that’s how it was. As I flew past the woman’s face, her expression turned from one of calm engagement to total surprise.

As she pushed back in her seat to avoid me, the shock etched on her features could not have been more stark.

But she was no more shaken, dear reader, than me. I hadn’t been expecting anyone on the sofa, let alone a TV celebrity, nor one who was mid-interview. As I headed toward the opposite end of the sofa, for the first time I observed the lighting. The cameras. The crew watching the action from the shadows. By the time I landed, all the demonic energy that had propelled me from the other end of the sofa was gone.

I was, no longer, a Snow Lion possessed.

She looked at me. I looked at her. Both of us were taking in what had just happened. It was only then that I remembered conversations in the executive assistants’ office during recent weeks about her expected visit. As a feline of considerable experience in diplomatic circles, I am not one to name-drop about the Dalai Lama’s visitors. Let me just say that the woman concerned was an American of Greek descent. One who founded an online media outlet that went on to become one of the fastest growing in the world. An author herself, one of her most recent books concerns what it means to thrive. There, that’s as many hints as I’m willing to disclose.

As the woman and I regarded each other closely, from across the coffee table there came a gentle chuckle.

“She likes to do this, sometimes,” said His Holiness. “Especially if I spend too much time at my desk.”

“This is HHC?” asked the Dalai Lama’s guest, her voice sonorous and merry. To give credit where it is due, she seemed to have landed on her feet just as quickly as I had.

His Holiness was nodding.

“Well,” she said, glancing over at where I sat, blue-eyed and looking so innocent that you would not even believe a clot of cream would melt in my pink mouth. “I didn’t think I’d be welcoming two celebrities to the show.”