Gobbolino the Witch's Cat

Contents

Foreword

1 Gobbolino in Disgrace

2 Gobbolino is Left Alone

3 Gobbolino Finds a Home

4 Hobgoblin

5 The Orphanage

6 Gruel

7 The Lord Mayor’s Coach

8 The Lady Mayoress Doesn’t Like Cats

9 Gobbolino on Show

10 Gobbolino at Sea

11 The Little Princess

12 Punch and Judy

13 Gobbolino in the Tower

14 Gobbolino the Woodcutter

15 Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat

16 Gobbolino the Kitchen Cat

About the Author

Foreword

When I was young, I had a lot of books about cats. I didn’t see my father very often, as he and my mother were divorced, but every birthday he sent me a book, and at least six of them were cat stories – Millions of Cats, The True Philosopher and His Cat, The Cat, the Dog and the Dormouse, Tinkle the Cat, Puss in Books, The Cat of Bubastes. (I still have them all, which is lucky, as I’m afraid many of them are now out of print.) But one book I didn’t have was Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat, because it came out just after I had left school and was reading adult books. I had never read it until I was asked if I would like to write a foreword. Always happy to read a new cat story, I said I would love to, and read it in one joyful gulp.

Who could help loving Gobbolino? He is such an endearing character that it seems impossible that he should have so many misfortunes, that he should not be able to find a friendly home in the very first chapter of his story. And yet, time after time, something awful happens and he loses his opportunity.

When I was young, and in the middle of a gripping book, I used to creep out of bed and lie on the floor, reading by the ray of light that shone into my room from the oil lamp on the landing (there was no electricity in our village at that time). I read until some adult came upstairs and caught me at it and gave me a tremendous scolding. Gobbolino would certainly have been read in that way, for who could bear to stop reading when the poor little fellow is trudging along lonely roads or through wild forests? Some of his adventures are quite hair-raising, especially the last one, when it seems impossible that he can escape being thrown down the Hurricane Mountains by the evil witch.

I wonder why the witches in folk tales nearly always have cats, not dogs or pigs, as their companions? Is it because cats used to be worshipped in ancient Egypt and other long-ago civilizations? Or because cats are so cool and self-reliant, giving us the notion that they can get along quite nicely without us, thank you – apart from a bowlful of food when they want it, a warm bed to sleep in when required, and a bit of stroking five or six times a day.

Surprisingly, although cats so often figure as witches’ associates, there are not many folk tales in which cats are the heroes. There’s Puss in Boots, of course, but he is rather a bossy, uncat-like cat. There is Dick Whittington’s cat, another bossy character, persuading his master to turn back and become Lord Mayor of London. There’s the cat who rushed up the chimney squawking, “My stars! Old Peter’s dead and I’m the King of the Cats!” We don’t hear any more than that about him. And I remember, from Andrew Lang’s Pink Fairy Book, a touching story called “The Cat’s Elopement”. But apart from these I can think of few cats in folk tales – cats don’t choose to have their stories told.

Poetry seems to suit them better. There are plenty of cats in poems. There is “I love Little Pussy, His coat is so warm,” to which my father added the lines “And if I annoy him, He’ll chew off my arm.” There is a wonderful refrain in “Millions of Cats”: “Cats here, cats there, Cats and kittens everywhere, Hundreds of cats, Thousands of cats, Millions and billions and trillions of cats.” There is “Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been? I’ve been up to London to visit the Queen.” And then there is Thomas Gray’s cat who drowned in a tub of goldfishes. It must have been a very large bowl, or a very small and stupid cat!