Position of a string within a string using Linux shell script?

Question

If I have the text in a shell variable, say $a:

a=\"The cat sat on the mat\"

How can I search for \"cat\" and return 4 using a

Answer 1

I used awk for this

a="The cat sat on the mat"
test="cat"
awk -v a="$a" -v b="$test" 'BEGIN{print index(a,b)}'