Gobbolino the Witch's 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.

2

Gobbolino is Left Alone

In the morning Gobbolino heard the witch talking things over with his mother.

“I think we ought to apprentice the kittens very quickly,” she said. “There is Sootica, who is eager to learn, and will make a clever little cat, while the sooner the nonsense is knocked out of her brother’s head the better.”

So when the moon rose round and full the witch and her cat mounted their broomstick with the two young kittens in a bag slung behind them, and sailed away over the mountains to apprentice them to other witches, for that is the way to train a witch’s cat.

They flew so fast, so fast, that little Gobbolino, peeping through a hole in the sack, saw the stars of the Milky Way flutter past him like a shower of diamonds – so fast that the bats they overtook seemed to lumber along like clumsy elephants.

It made him dizzy to look below him at the sleeping hills and rivers, the chasms and lakes, the watchful mountains and brooding cities. Little Sootica mewed for joy at their wild and giddy flight, but Gobbolino shivered at the bottom of the sack, while tears of terror dropped on his white front paw.

“Oh, please, stop! Oh, please, please, please!” he sobbed, but nobody paid any attention to him.

At last with a glorious swoop like the dive of a wild seabird, the witch and her broomstick came down on the Hurricane Mountains, where lived a hideous witch who agreed almost at once to take little Sootica into her cavern and train her as a witch’s cat.

The kitten was so overjoyed she could hardly stop to say goodbye to her little brother, she was so eager to begin learning how to turn people into toads and frogs and other disagreeable objects.

Gobbolino cried a little at parting with his playmate, but the witch quite refused to take him with his sister.

“A witch’s cat with a white paw! Ho! Ho! Ho!” she croaked. “You’ll never get rid of that one!”

So Gobbolino rode away on the broomstick once more, behind his mother Grimalkin and her mistress, and although they visited fifty or more caverns before the dawn broke over the Hurricane Mountains, not a witch would look twice at the kitten with the white paw and beautiful blue eyes.

So they flew home again and flung Gobbolino into the cavern among the toads, and there he stayed day after day, till one fine morning he woke up and found himself all alone.

The witch had gone and Grimalkin too, the cauldron, the book of spells, the toads, the foxes, the magic herbs, the brews, the broomstick, everything that had once made magic.

They had all flown away and deserted him for ever.

3

Gobbolino Finds a Home

The witch and her cat Grimalkin had been so unkind to him that little Gobbolino was not sorry to be without them, but all the same it is a terrible thing for so young a kitten to be left all alone, and he spent some hours at the door of the cavern crying bitterly and wondering what was to become of him.

“Suppose they never come back!” sobbed Gobbolino. “Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?”

But at last the idea came to him that if his mother Grimalkin and her mistress the witch had really left him for good there was no need for him to stay in the cavern and be a witch’s cat any longer. He could go out into the world whenever he pleased and find a happy home to live in for ever and ever.

When this happy idea had struck little Gobbolino he stopped crying immediately and began to look round him.

The witch’s cavern was on the edge of a forest, but not very far away were fields and woods and a river, and beyond these must be houses and farms and cities such as he had seen from his ride on the witch’s broomstick.

Surely somewhere there must be a comfortable hearth and kind people, willing to offer a happy home to a little cat?

Gobbolino washed his face and then his coat and paws very carefully before he left the cavern for ever.

He trotted through the fields feeling very bold and brave, till the forest was out of sight behind him, and there in front was the river, winding its way in and out of reeds and shallows, bubbling and churning like the spell-water in the witch’s cauldron, or flowing smoothly, with bright fishes in it that caught little Gobbolino’s hungry eye and made his mouth water.