Gobbolino the Witch's Cat

“The children found it swimming in the millrace, father.”

“Kittens don’t swim, mother.”

“The children said it was swimming for its life.”

“It seems strange to me, mother, that a kitten should find itself in the millrace unless somebody tried to drown it.”

“It fell in catching fishes, it said. It came from the cavern on the hill.”

“Ah!” said the farmer, and he was silent for a long while.

“Did you see the tricks it was after when I came in?” he asked presently.

“I heard the children laughing, from the cowshed,” said the farmer’s wife. “It was playing with a cotton reel.”

“It was playing stranger tricks than that,” said the farmer. “Sparks in its ears, sparks in its eyes, vanishing, popping out of cuckoo clocks – that’s no way for a kitten to behave, mother.”

“The sparks came out of the fire, and the children put it in the cuckoo clock,” said the farmer’s wife.

The farmer was silent again for several minutes.

“It’s a strange-looking kitten, mother,” he said at last.

“The children are very fond of it,” replied the farmer’s wife.

The farmer said no more about it, and soon enough they went to bed, while Gobbolino slept and purred and dreamed and the sparks died out of the fire, and a hobgoblin tapped at the windowpane.

Tap! Tap! Tap! Tap! Tap!

Now every kitchen cat knows that when a tap comes on the window after dark no notice should be taken of it at all. If it is a stranger looking for shelter, sooner or later he will wake the farmer up, but the kitchen cat goes on sleeping under the table. It has nothing to do with him.

But little Gobbolino, who had never been a kitchen cat before, sat up immediately with his ears a-prick and whispered:

“Who goes there?”

Tap! Tap! Tap! Tap! Tap!

The hobgoblin peeped in through the window and winked at Gobbolino.

He had a little brown face and a little brown cap, and he beckoned with a little brown finger, whispering:

“Come and let me in, my little cat, now do!”

Gobbolino sat and stared at him, saying nothing at all.

“What a lovely kitchen you have, my little friend!” sighed the hobgoblin. “What bright dishes! What glittering pans! What a pretty cradle! What a nice warm hearth! Won’t you let me come in and warm my toes, my pretty one?”

Gobbolino only sat and stared at him, saying nothing at all.

The hobgoblin became very impatient, and rattled at the windowpane, saying:

“You kitchen cats are all alike! All selfish! All self-satisfied! Look at you warming your toes in safety and comfort, and look at me, all lonely and lost in the cold outside!”

When Gobbolino heard these words he did not hesitate any longer. He remembered how a short while ago he too had been lonely and lost, and might be still if the children had not brought him into the farm. When the hobgoblin called him a kitchen cat he remembered how lucky he was, and trotted straight across to open the window.

“You may come in and warm your toes for a little while beside the fire,” he said.

The hobgoblin slipped across the table and sat down on the hearth beside Gobbolino, leaving dirty wet footmarks all across the kitchen floor.

“How is all your family?” he asked in a friendly manner, giving Gobbolino’s tail a friendly tweak.

“My mother Grimalkin has gone away with my mistress the witch!” replied Gobbolino. “And my little sister Sootica is apprenticed to a hag in the Hurricane Mountains. I don’t know how any of them are.”

“Oho!” said the hobgoblin with a gleam of mischief. “So you are a witch’s kitten?”

“Oh, no!” said Gobbolino shaking his head, “I am no longer any witch’s cat. This afternoon I became a kitchen cat, and a kitchen cat I shall be for ever and ever.”

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” laughed the hobgoblin, turning head over heels as if he thought Gobbolino was the greatest joke in the world. His somersault brought the farmer’s wife’s knitting off the chair, and in a moment it was tangled round the table legs, the pins were strewn over the floor, and the stitches running higgledy-piggledy after one another in greatest confusion.

“Take care! Take care!” cried Gobbolino, but the hobgoblin made one bound into the dairy and slammed the door.

Now every kitchen cat knows that no one may enter the dairy between sundown and sunrise, except the farmer’s wife, but Gobbolino had no idea of it.

He trotted round and round the kitchen gathering up the wool and the knitting-pins, trying to set them straight again, but all in vain. When the hobgoblin bounced back from the dairy sucking his fingers, which were covered with cream, the tangle was as hopeless as ever, and there was nothing to do but put it back on the cradle just as it was.

“Well, I’m off!” said the hobgoblin, jumping out of the window in one leap. “Maybe I’ll come back again and see you another night, maybe I won’t. Goodnight, my little witch’s kitten, and pleasant dreams to you!”

Gobbolino felt very relieved when the hobgoblin was gone, and he had bolted the window fast behind him.