As anyone who has lost a beloved pet knows, the experience is like losing a part—the better part—of one's self. Animals, many people feel instinctively, are more than their soft fur and big eyes. Building on that impulse, and on the success of animal/people memoirs like John Grogan's Marley and Me (Morrow, 2005) and animal-centered novels like Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain (Harper, 2008), new books set out to prove that animals are spiritual beings with lessons to impart.

In The Divine Life of Animals: One Man's Quest to Discover Whether the Souls of Animals Live On (Crown, June), author Ptolemy Tompkins looks at the spiritual natures of animals through the lenses of the world's religions, great and small. Our relationship with animals, he says, reminds us of our existence before the Fall—a story he finds at the center of many faiths—when we were in harmony with the natural world. "When we make a connection with an animal, something happens," Tompkins tells RBL, recounting stories of people who commune with bears, seals, and other wild animals. "We are healed a little bit from the isolation of being the most advanced beings on the planet. They keep us from becoming too spiritually lost."

Jack Wintz would agree with Tompkins that animals play a special role in our spiritual development. In his I Will See You in Heaven (Paraclete, Apr.), Wintz, a Franciscan friar, looks to the Bible to show that God sees animals as beings uniquely positioned to care for and nurture us as we care for and nurture them. The book is a repackaging of Wintz's successful Will I See My Dog in Heaven? (Paraclete, 2009) and is intended as a gift book for those grieving the loss of a pet.

In July, WaterBrook Multnomah publishes Blind Hope: An Unwanted Dog and the Woman She Rescued by Kim Meeder and Laurie Sacher. Meeder, a two-time Multnomah author, tells the story of how Sacher found Christ through her relationship with a blind stray named Mia. "My relationship with my dog has really shown me a tangible picture of God's heart for me through my heart for my dog," Sacher says in a promotional video.

With all this tongue-wagging over dogs, perhaps next year publishers will put in a good meow for cats.