‘Do you know what tomorrow is, Kitty?’ Alice began. ‘You’d have guessed it if you’d been up in the window with me – only Dinah was making you tidy, so you couldn’t. I was watching the boys getting in sticks for the bonfire – and it wants plenty of sticks, Kitty! Only it got so cold, and it snowed, so they had to leave off. Never mind, Kitty, we’ll go and see the bonfire tomorrow.’ Here Alice wound two or three turns of the worsted round the kitten’s neck, just to see how it would look: this led to a scramble, in which the ball rolled down upon the floor, and yards and yards of it got unwound again.
‘Do you know, I was so angry, Kitty,’ Alice went on, as soon as they were comfortably settled again, ‘when I saw all the mischief you had been doing. I was very nearly opening the window, and putting you out into the snow! And you’d have deserved it, you little mischievous darling! What have you got to say for yourself? Now don’t interrupt me!’ she went on, holding up one finger. ‘I’m going to tell you all your faults. Number one: you squeaked twice while Dinah was washing your face this morning. Now you can’t deny it, Kitty, I heard you! What’s that you say?’ (pretending that the kitten was speaking.) ‘Her paw went into your eye? Well, that’s your fault, for keeping your eyes open – if you’d shut them tight up, it wouldn’t have happened. Now don’t make any more excuses, but listen! Number two: you pulled Snowdrop away by the tail just as I had put down the saucer of milk before her! What, you were thirsty, were you? How do you know she wasn’t thirsty too? Now for number three: you unwound every bit of the worsted while I wasn’t looking!
‘That’s three faults, Kitty, and you’ve not been punished for any of them yet. You know I’m saving up all your punishments for Wednesday week – suppose they had saved up all my punishments!’ she went on, talking more to herself than the kitten. ‘What would they do at the end of a year? I should be sent to prison, I suppose, when the day came. Or – let me see – suppose each punishment was to be going without a dinner: then, when the miserable day came, I should have to go without fifty dinners at once! Well, I shouldn’t mind that much! I’d far rather go without them than eat them!
‘Do you hear the snow against the window panes, Kitty? How nice and soft it sounds! Just as if someone was kissing the window all over outside. I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.” And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about – whenever the wind blows – oh, that’s very pretty!’ cried Alice, dropping the ball of worsted to clap her hands. ‘And I do so wish it was true! I’m sure the woods look sleepy in the autumn, when the leaves are getting brown.
‘Kitty, can you play chess? Now, don’t smile, my dear, I’m asking it seriously. Because, when we were playing just now, you watched just as if you understood it: and when I said “Check!” you purred! Well, it was a nice check, Kitty, and really I might have won, if it hadn’t been for that nasty Knight, that came wriggling down among my pieces. Kitty, dear, let’s pretend—’ And here I wish I could tell you half the things Alice used to say, beginning with her favourite phrase ‘Let’s pretend.’ She had had quite a long argument with her sister only the day before – all because Alice had begun with ‘Let’s pretend we’re kings and queens’; and her sister, who liked being very exact, had argued that they couldn’t because there were only two of them, and Alice had been reduced at last to say ‘Well, you can be one of them then, and I’ll be all the rest.’ And once she had really frightened her old nurse by shouting suddenly in her ear, ‘Nurse! Do let’s pretend that I’m a hungry hyena, and you’re a bone!’
But this is taking us away from Alice’s speech to the kitten. ‘Let’s pretend that you’re the Red Queen, Kitty! Do you know, I think, if you sat up and folded your arms, you’d look exactly like her. Now do try, there’s a dear!’ And Alice got the Red Queen off the table, and set it up before the kitten as a model for it to imitate: however, the thing didn’t succeed, principally, Alice said, because the kitten wouldn’t fold its arms properly. So, to punish it, she held it up to the Looking-glass, that it might see how sulky it was. ‘– and if you’re not good directly,’ she added, ‘I’ll put you through into Looking-glass House. How would you like that?
‘Now, if you’ll only attend, Kitty, and not talk so much, I’ll tell you all my ideas about Looking-glass House. First, there’s the room you can see through the glass – that’s just the same as our drawing-room, only the things go the other way. I can see all of it when I get upon a chair – all but the bit just behind the fire-place. Oh! I do so wish I could see that bit! I want so much to know whether they’ve a fire in the winter: you never can tell, you know, unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room too – but that may be only pretence, just to make it look as if they had a fire. Well then, the books are something like our books, only the words go the wrong way; I know that, because I’ve held up one of our books to the glass, and then they hold up one in the other room.
‘How would you like to live in Looking-glass House, Kitty? I wonder if they’d give you milk in there? Perhaps Looking-glass milk isn’t good to drink. But oh, Kitty! now we come to the passage. You can just see a little peep of the passage in Looking-glass House, if you leave the door of our drawing-room wide open; and it’s very like our passage as far as you can see, only you know it may be quite different on beyond. Oh, Kitty! how nice it would be if we could only get through into Looking-glass House! I’m sure it’s got, oh! such beautiful things in it! Let’s pretend there’s a way of getting through into it somehow, Kitty. Let’s pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we can get through. Why, it’s turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It’ll be easy enough to get through—’ She was up on the chimney-piece while she said this, though she hardly knew how she had got there. And certainly the glass was beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist.
In another moment Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly down into the Looking-glass room. The very first thing she did was to look whether there was a fire in the fireplace, and she was quite pleased to find that there was a real one, blazing away as brightly as the one she had left behind. ‘So I shall be as warm here as I was in the old room,’ thought Alice: ‘warmer, in fact, because there’ll be no one here to scold me away from the fire. Oh, what fun it’ll be when they see me through the glass in here, and can’t get at me!’
Then she began looking about, and noticed that what could be seen from the old room was quite common and uninteresting, but that all the rest was as different as possible. For instance, the pictures on the wall next to the fire seemed to be alive, and the very clock on the chimney-piece (you know you can only see the back of it in the Looking-glass) had got the face of a little old man and grinned at her.
GOBBOLINO THE WITCH’S CAT
by Ursula Moray Williams
When I was young I didn’t own many books myself. I borrowed nearly all my books from the public library. If I close my eyes I can still picture that lovely room, full of children’s books. Sometimes I looked for my favourite authors, sometimes I chose at random, but by the time I was eleven or twelve I’d read my way all round the room, from Louisa M. Alcott to Ursula Moray Williams.
Ursula Moray Williams wrote many books for children. I was especially fond of a book about a very large family called the Binklebys – it always made me laugh out loud. I also loved Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat because it’s such a touching, gentle book, and even the youngest reader can guess that things will work out for poor Gobbolino eventually.
I’d have liked a second book, about the adventures of Gobbolino’s little sister Sootica. She’s a far feistier character than her brother, desperate to start her apprenticeship as a witch’s cat, and she mews for joy the first time she’s taken for a ride on a broomstick.
GOBBOLINO THE WITCH’S CAT
One fine moonlit night little Gobbolino, the witch’s kitten, and his sister Sootica tumbled out of the cavern where they had been born, to play at catch-a-mouse among the creeping shadows.
It was the first time they had left the cavern, and their round eyes were full of wonder and excitement at everything they saw.
Every leaf that blew, every dewdrop that glittered, every rustle in the forest around them set their furry black ears a-prick.
‘Did you hear that, brother?’
‘Did you see that, sister?’
‘I saw it! And that! And that! And that!’
When they were tired of playing they sat side by side in the moonlight talking and quarrelling a little, as a witch’s kittens will.
‘What will you be when you grow up?’ Gobbolino asked, as the moon began to sink behind the mountains and cocks crowed down the valley.
‘Oh, I’ll be a witch’s cat like my ma,’ said Sootica. ‘I’ll know all the Book of Magic off by heart and learn to ride a broomstick and turn mice into frogs and frogs into guinea-pigs. I’ll fly down the clouds on the night-wind with the bats and the barn owls, saying, “Meee-ee-ee-oww!” so when people hear me coming they’ll say: “Hush! There goes Sootica, the witch’s cat!”’
Gobbolino was very silent when he heard his sister’s fiery words.
‘And what will you be, brother?’ asked Sootica agreeably.
‘I’ll be a kitchen cat,’ said Gobbolino. ‘I’ll sit by the fire with my paws tucked under my chest and sing like the kettle on the hob. When the children come in from school they’ll pull my ears and tickle me under the chin and coax me round the kitchen with a cotton reel. I’ll mind the house and keep down the mice and watch the baby, and when all the children are in bed I’ll creep on my missus’s lap while she darns the stockings and master nods in his chair. I’ll stay with them for ever and ever, and they’ll call me Gobbolino the kitchen cat.’
‘Don’t you want to be bad?’ Sootica asked him in great surprise.
‘No,’ said Gobbolino, ‘I want to be good and have people love me. People don’t love witches’ cats. They are too disagreeable.’
He licked his paw and began to wash his face, while his little sister scowled at him and was just about to trot in and find their mother, when a ray of moonlight falling across both the kittens set her fur standing on end with rage and fear.
‘Brother! Brother! One of your paws is white!’
In the deeps of the witch’s cavern no one had noticed that little Gobbolino had been born with a white front paw. Everyone knows this is quite wrong for witches’ kittens, which are black all over from head to foot, but now the moonbeam lit up a pure white sock with five pink pads beneath it, while the kitten’s coat, instead of being jet black like his sister’s, had a faint sheen of tabby, and his lovely round eyes were blue! All witches’ kittens are born with green eyes.
No wonder that little Sootica flew into the cavern with cries of distress to tell her mother all about it.
‘Ma! Ma! Our Gobbolino has a white sock! He has blue eyes! His coat is tabby, not black, and he wants to be a kitchen cat!’
The kitten’s cries brought her mother Grimalkin to the door of the cavern. Their mistress, the witch, was not far behind her, and in less time than it takes to tell they had knocked the unhappy Gobbolino head over heels, set him on his feet again, cuffed his ears, tweaked his tail, bounced him, bullied him, and so bewildered him that he could only stare stupidly at them, blinking his beautiful blue eyes as if he could not imagine what they were so angry about.
At last Grimalkin picked him up by the scruff of his neck and dropped him in the darkest, dampest corner of the cavern among the witch’s tame toads.
Gobbolino was afraid of the toads and shivered and shook all night.
THE CAT THAT WALKED BY HIMSELF
by Rudyard Kipling
My teacher used to read us Just So Stories when I was at primary school. Maybe your teacher has read them to you, and even asked you to make up your own animal fable. The Cat That Walked by Himself has always been my favourite, though I dislike the passage where the wild Man throws his boots and little stone axe at the cat.
The Cat in the story is such a real cat, so clever and artful. My Jacob is sometimes a cat who likes to walk by himself, waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone – and he too will kill mice and be kind to babies just so long as they do not pull his tail too hard. Little Lily is unusually gregarious for a cat and will always choose to walk with Jacob rather than wander off by herself.
Thomas was the cat of mine who walked by himself – and went on walking. He was a little stray, a slinky black boy who slept under my garden shed and pressed his face longingly against the French windows, desperate to get indoors. He made friends with Jacob and did his best to ingratiate himself with me, lying down and waving his paws, trying to make himself look as cute as possible.
It worked. Thomas lived with me very happily for two years. Then he started getting into violent scraps with a new fierce cat living further up the road. He began to stay out longer and longer, and didn’t seem very hungry when he came home. He was clearly being fed somewhere else. Then one day he sauntered off – and never came back.
I went up and down the roads searching for him, I leafleted the neighbourhood with his photo, and stuck posters on lampposts. I phoned all the nearby vets, because Thomas had been chipped and so could easily be traced. No one had seen hide nor hair of him.
He might have been in some terrible accident, of course – but I like to think he’d simply decided it was time to stroll off elsewhere. I hope he’s very happy, wherever he is now. My heart still stops whenever I see a sleek little black cat running along the pavement. It’s never Thomas – but I still haven’t given up hope that he’ll stop walking by his wild lone and come back home.
THE CAT THAT WALKED BY HIMSELF
Hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild. The Dog was wild, and the Horse was wild, and the Cow was wild, and the Sheep was wild, and the Pig was wild – as wild as wild could be – and they walked in the Wet Wild Woods by their wild lones. But the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.
Of course the Man was wild too. He was dreadfully wild. He didn’t even begin to be tame till he met the Woman, and she told him that she did not like living in his wild ways. She picked out a nice dry Cave, instead of a heap of wet leaves, to lie down in; and she strewed clean sand on the floor; and she lit a nice fire of wood at the back of the Cave; and she hung a dried wild-horse skin, tail-down, across the opening of the Cave; and she said, ‘Wipe your feet, dear, when you come in, and now we’ll keep house.’
That night, Best Beloved, they ate wild sheep roasted on the hot stones, and flavoured with wild garlic and wild pepper; and wild duck stuffed with wild rice and wild fenugreek and wild coriander; and marrow-bones of wild oxen; and wild cherries, and wild grenadillas. Then the Man went to sleep in front of the fire ever so happy; but the Woman sat up, combing her hair. She took the bone of the shoulder of mutton – the big flat blade-bone – and she looked at the wonderful marks on it, and she threw more wood on the fire, and she made a Magic. She made the First Singing Magic in the world.
Out in the Wet Wild Woods all the wild animals gathered together where they could see the light of the fire a long way off, and they wondered what it meant.
Then Wild Horse stamped with his wild foot and said, ‘O my Friends and O my Enemies, why have the Man and the Woman made that great light in that great Cave, and what harm will it do us?’
Wild Dog lifted up his wild nose and smelled the smell of the roast mutton, and said, ‘I will go up and see and look, and say; for I think it is good. Cat, come with me.’
‘Nenni!’ said the Cat. ‘I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me. I will not come.’
‘Then we can never be friends
again,’ said Wild Dog, and he trotted off to the Cave. But when he had gone a little way the Cat said to himself, ‘All places are alike to me. Why should I not go too and see and look and come away at my own liking?’ So he slipped after Wild Dog softly, very softly, and hid himself where he could hear everything.
When Wild Dog reached the mouth of the Cave he lifted up the dried horse-skin with his nose and sniffed the beautiful smell of the roast mutton, and the Woman, looking at the blade-bone, heard him, and laughed, and said, ‘Here comes the first. Wild Thing out of the Wild Woods, what do you want?’
Wild Dog said, ‘O my Enemy and Wife of my Enemy, what is this that smells so good in the Wild Woods?’
Then the Woman picked up a roasted mutton-bone and threw it to the Wild Dog, and said, ‘Wild Thing out of the Wild Woods, taste and try.’ Wild Dog gnawed the bone, and it was more delicious than anything he had ever tasted, and he said, ‘O my Enemy and Wife of my Enemy, give me another.’
The Woman said, ‘Wild Thing out of the Wild Woods, help my Man to hunt through the day and guard this Cave at night, and I will give you as many roast bones as you need.’
‘Ah!’ said the Cat, listening. ‘This is a very wise Woman, but she is not so wise as I am.’
Wild Dog crawled into the Cave and laid his head on the Woman’s lap, and said, ‘O my Friend and Wife of my Friend, I will help your Man to hunt through the day, and at night I will guard your Cave.’
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