Paws for a Moment by Zohar Kohavi: book review

Paws for a Moment by Zohar Kohavi (2025) is a memoir-type book about the author’s life with his cat, Cato, for 21 years across three continents. The author reflects on daily life, illness, aging, and grief. This pet story is a meditation on love, loss, companionship, and the blurred boundaries between human and animal interactions.

The book is structured as a series of titled prose-poems or micro-essays. Each section can be read on its own but are also interconnected with other sections, copying the way grief and memory circles, doubles back, and resists closure in one’s mind.

I like the way the author doesn’t romanticize the challenges of caring for an aging animal. Instead, he captures the frustration and tenderness. As the author states, “Writing brings him back to life. Revives our relationship. Strums the delicate strings of understanding between us.”

Although this book is intensely personal, it has universal appeal and resonance. The narration is fragmented on purpose, which I had no problem with, but it might not be the style for readers preferring a traditional memoir. Lovely book cover! Overall, Paws for a Moment is a moving and unusual account of mourning and companionship.

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MARTINA NICOLLS

MARTINA NICOLLS is an Australian author and international human rights-based consultant in foreign aid evaluations and audits, education, psychosocial support, resilience, peace and stabilization, and communication, including script writing. She lives in Paris. Her latest books are: If Paris Were My Lover (2025), Tranquility Mapping (2025), Moon, Mood, and Mind Mapping Tracker (2025), and Innovations within Constraints Handbook (2025). She is the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

Review, Amazon, 20 August 2025, Adam Smith, France

"Lush, lyrical, and deeply intimate, If Paris Were My Lover is a poetic meditation on healing, sensuality, and self-reclamation. Framed as a love affair with the city, it invites you to see Paris and yourself anew. A beautiful companion for anyone navigating rebirth after heartbreak, it lingers like perfume and moonlight on skin. Elegant, raw, unforgettable."

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