Reincarnation is a tricky old business. For a kick off it’s one of the few philosophies that’s embraced by virtually every religion in one form or another. It is an intrinsic part of Native American and Inuit traditions and can be found in Norse mythology.

It even runs outside religious doctrine and is embraced by followers as a metaphysical belief that some essential part of our being survives physical death – and as long as it’s the parts of my body that don’t constantly let me down I’m happy to roll with that theory.

I mean there’s no point in coming back as some super-reconstructed life force that has a runny nose and makes unfortunate bodily noises at inappropriate moments.

There have, down the ages, been some famous advocates of reincarnation. For instance General S Patton truly believed he was a reincarnation of Carthaginian general Hannibal. Unfortunately Patton had a bit of a roller-coaster ride second time around as a warring general and upset a few of his peers in the Second World War.

Another American buying into the belief was Henry Ford. He was convinced he had lived before – though not for very long – as a soldier killed in the battle of Gettysburg. His vengeance was to a build a car that you could only buy in black and ultimately morphed into the Mondeo.

I rather suspect he had another pop at us in the automotive world by coming back as the designer of the Austin Allegro.

It’s a tempting parlour game of course deciding who people were in a previous life. Was Gordon Brown King Canute who thought he could hold back the tide that was about to wash over him? Was Mick Jagger one of the Tudor composers such as William Byrd who headed the musical Renaissance? Did Christiano Ronaldo originally appear on this planet as George Sheldon – an American who was the first man to win an Olympic gold medal for diving?

You could also come at it from the other angle of course and decide what you’d like to see current people return as. For instance those million pound bankers could come back as impoverished Amazonian tribesmen.

Anyway, I’ll leave you with that game as it could make an ideal alternative to the now tedious charades suggested by Uncle Bert at your family Christmas gathering.

The thing is, as I understand it, there’s no guarantee you’ll actually come back as a human being and that’s very worrying. Now enlightened, do we treat slugs and spiders with greater deference? Let us no longer ply them with garish blue pills or flatten them with the nearest book over 800 pages long.

They might be somebody we knew and loved.

Clearly 46-year-old Peter Keonig was locked into this line of thinking. He is a Buddhist and also a bank robber currently serving five years for armed raids in Germany. I’m not quite sure where this fits in with karma, the Three Jewels and in particular Sangha (the practice of good community), but let’s not get picky.

The German can’t be faulted for a steadfast belief in reincarnation. Unfortunately the courts aren’t buying into it. His request for his cat to have visiting rights were turned down – despite Keonig claiming the animal was a reincarnation of his mother.

The court ruling was: “While we respect the religious freedom of individuals, the accused has not been able to furnish proof that his deceased mother has been reborn a cat.”

I wonder if they managed to keep a straight face? So there you have the lottery that is reincarnation. If his mum had come back as an African grey parrot I suppose she could have told them herself.