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For Alison
First published in 2016 by Scholastic Children’s Books
Euston House, 24 Eversholt Street
London NW1 1DB
a division of Scholastic Ltd
www.scholastic.co.uk
London ~ New York ~ Toronto ~ Sydney ~ Auckland
Mexico City ~ New Delhi ~ Hong Kong
Text and illustrations copyright © 2016 Nick Sharratt
eISBN 978 1407 17879 0
All rights reserved
The moral rights of Nick Sharratt have been asserted
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Nick Sharratt
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Chapter 1
Once upon a time there was a
king who lived in a rather grand
castle, with his best friend,
the cat.
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The Cat and the King
The Cat and the King
The king was very good at doing all the
things that kings do, like walking on red
carpets, making speeches, cutting ribbons,
and balancing a heavy crown on his head.
We hereby take great
delight in the cutting
of this ribbon.
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He had a dozen servants to do everything else.
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The cat was very good at making sure
everything ran smoothly in the castle.
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He didn’t say much, because cats don’t
actually talk, but he had nice, neat handwriting
and a big supply of sticky notes on which he
could write instructions.
Everything ticked along nicely in the castle –
until an Unfortunate Incident that the cat could
not prevent.
Let’s just say it involved a fire-breathing
dragon.
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Fortunately no one was hurt, but the king and
the cat had to move out of the castle and find
somewhere else to live.
They looked at lots of places . . .
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. . . and finally settled on Number 37, Castle
Close, because the address had a nice,
comforting ring to it.
Number 37 wasn’t as grand as their previous
home, but it didn’t need to be, because now it
was just the two of them, the cat and the king.
The Cat and the King
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Right after the Unfortunate
Incident, the servants had
decided they didn’t fancy
being servants any more
and had run off to find
other jobs.
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And Number 37 didn’t need to be grand because
the king and the cat had next to no furniture left
and hardly any possessions.
The king had his
four-poster bed which,
since the Unfortunate
Incident, was now a
three-poster bed.
He also had a trunk
filled with bits and bobs
(including his pyjamas and
toothbrush),
and his crown (which
he NEVER took off.)
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The cat had his sticky notes,
his felt-tip pens,
his laptop,
his Swiss penknife
and the Royal Money Box.
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The Cat and the King
He also had his driving licence, which meant
they were able to hire a van to take themselves
and what little they had to the new house.
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The two of them stood outside the front door.
The king had never needed to open a door before
(there had always been a servant to do it for him)
and he wasn’t sure how keys worked, either. So
the cat let them in – and that is how their life in
Castle Close began.
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The Cat and the King
Chapter 2
The next morning, the king and the cat were
having a nice long lie-in after unpacking the
van the night before.
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It had been quite hard work for the king,
because he wasn’t used to lifting and carrying
anything except sceptres and orbs and
ceremonial swords.
It had been quite hard
work for the cat, too.
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The cat’s bed had been destroyed in the
Unfortunate Incident so, that first night, he
and the king shared the three-poster bed, after
the cat had reassembled it with the help of the
screwdriver blade in his Swiss penknife.
They were still dozing when the doorbell
rang. The cat leapt out of bed and ran down to
open the front door.
There on the doorstep were a friendly looking
lady and two smiley children, a girl and a boy.
“Hello!” said the lady. “Welcome to Castle
Close. We saw you moving in yesterday. We’re
your neighbours from Number 35. I’m Caroline
and this is Cressida and Christopher. We’re the
Cromwells.”
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“We are in the
bedchamber!” boomed a
voice. �
��Hasten forth!”
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The cat led everyone upstairs
and presented them to the king.
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Mrs Cromwell and Cressida curtsied and
Christopher burtsied. (A burtsey is a bow and
a curtsey mixed together and Christopher had
invented it.)
The king nodded, but said nothing.
“Welcome to Castle Close, Your Majesty,”
said Mrs Cromwell, and she handed the king
a large round tin that had been decorated with
glued-on paper crowns.
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The king wasn’t familiar with opening tins,
and waited silently for the cat to take off the
lid. Inside were golden-coloured, finger-shaped
biscuits, dipped in chocolate.
“A house-warming present,” said Mrs Cromwell.
“We made them ourselves,” added Cressida.
“ROYAL Shortbread,” announced
Christopher.
The king clapped his hands
and burst into a huge smile.
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“Bravo!” he cried. “Bravo! We are most
pleased.”
(He liked to say “we” instead of “I” when he
was addressing anyone other than the cat – it
was something kings did.)
The cat opened the trunk, rummaged around
and pulled out three gold medals.
Then, one by one, Mrs Cromwell, Cressida
and Christopher were solemnly
commanded by the king to step
forward and receive a special
honour each, for Services
to Baking.
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Chapter 3
After the Cromwells had left, the king and the
cat sat in the bed, nibbling fingers of Royal
Shortbread. Even though the biscuits were
delicious, the king looked a bit forlorn.
“I miss my hunting,” he sighed.
Hunting was one of the “king things” that
he’d liked doing most before the Unfortunate
Incident. But it wasn’t foxes or deer or boars
or hares that the king
had hunted.
It was thimbles.
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On a hunting day, the cat would go out
and hide a gold thimble in the grounds
of the castle and the king would try
to find it. It was much more fun
than chasing wild animals.
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It was much more of a challenge, too, because
thimbles are so tiny, but the cat would provide a
few clues to make it a bit easier.
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Of course, all the thimbles had been lost in
the Unfortunate Incident, so there could be no
Hunt-the-Thimble this Sunday morning.
But the cat was a clever cat and had another
kind of hunting planned . . . Bargain Hunting!
The king and the cat got into the van and
drove to a car-boot sale on the outskirts of the
town where they now lived.
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The aim of the Bargain Hunt was to buy
all the things they needed for their new home
without spending a huge amount of money. The
king was very excited by this challenge, but
he’d never actually bought anything before and
had absolutely no idea about what things should
cost, because the cat always dealt with that kind
of thing.
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Together they approached the first stall and
looked hard at all the things on sale. The king
saw something he liked, took a guess at what
he should pay, and proclaimed in his special
speech-making voice:
We hereby, on this third Sunday in June,
do make payment of one royal penny in
exchange for one armchair.
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The stallholder, who wasn’t used to seeing
kings at car-boot sales (or cats with money
boxes, come to that) was so surprised that he
just nodded his head and took the coin without
saying a word.
The king and the cat moved on to the next
stall and again examined everything closely.
The cat pointed to a few items, the king had a
ponder, and then declared:
We hereby, on
this third Sunday in June,
do make payment of one royal
penny in exchange for one
saucepan, one kettle and
one mixing bowl.
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The lady behind the stall, who never normally
sold anything for less than 50p, was speechless.
She opened her mouth but made no sound as the
king pressed a little coin into her hand.
So it went on. By midday, the king and the
cat had spent one single penny at each and every
stall.
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This is what they’d purchased:
an armchair,
a saucepan, a kettle
and a mixing bowl,
an artificial Christmas tree,
a laundry basket with
towels, tablecloths and
a feather boa inside it,
a beanbag,
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an extendable
dining table and
two dining chairs,
a spice rack,
a mirror in the
shape of a butterfly,
a clock in the
shape of a dog,
a teapot in the
shape of a caravan,
a hammock,
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a wheelbarrow,
a coffee table,
a tool box with
some tools in it,
a ceramic hen
to keep eggs in,
a filing cabinet full of
cutlery and crockery,
two deck chairs,
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a cactus that
was also a lamp,
a lamp that
was also a globe,
a dictionary, a bumper book
of jokes and a book all
about making party cakes,
a set of giant
dominoes,
and a pirate-shaped
bottle of bubble bath.
They’d spent a grand total of twenty-two
pence.
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Between them they loaded up the van (the king
felt he was really beginning to get the hang
of this lifting-and-carrying business)
and drove off, very pleased
with their purchases.
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Later on, when the stallholders had finally
recovered, they looked closely at their pennies
and saw that they weren’t just ordinary pennies.
They were stamped with the king’s head on one
side and an image of the cat on the other, and
they were made of pure, solid gold.
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Chapter 4
On the way back home the cat and the king
stopped to buy some groceries.
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It was the king’s first time shopping in a
supermarket and he was delighted to find that
it was just another kind of jolly hunting game.
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