Gobbolino the Witch's Cat

Real cats, of course, vary in their natures just as much as humans do. I have met spiteful cats, loving cats, clever cats, stupid cats. A highly intelligent orange cat, January, who adopted my father one New Year’s Day, learned how to rattle the latch of the dining-room door, so that it would swing open and let him in. He also, all by himself, invented a charming trick: when you softly clapped your hands above his head, he would lift up his right front paw to be shaken. Then there was Gracchus, a tabby belonging to my sister, who used to come and stay at our house along with my two nieces for summer holidays. He was epileptic and had to be given a tiny pill every day. This aroused great feelings of jealousy in our cat Hamlet, who thought he was missing out on some treat – so terrific dexterity and diplomacy were needed to get the pill into the right cat. And then there was Darwin, dear Darwin, who always took a shortcut through the banisters, and liked to lie with his shaggy arms around one’s neck . . .

If, out of a lifetime’s acquaintance with cats, I were asked to pick one to take with me to a desert island, I would find it very, very hard to decide. But if I were asked to make a choice from all the cats in books that I have come across, the choice would be far easier. Not Puss in Boots – I want none of that phoney Marquis of Carabas routine on my island. Not Kipling’s Cat that Walked by Himself – he would always be walking off. Not Whittington’s cat, forever ordering me to turn back – because where would we turn back to? None of these would do. No – who but Gobbolino could be relied on to find a comfortable, snug home somewhere on that island, and lead me to it . . .

Sussex, 2001

1

Gobbolino in Disgrace

One fine moonlight 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!”