GOBBOLINO THE WITCH’S CAT
1
Gobbolino in Disgrace
[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]
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!”
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, bulliedhim, 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
[Êàðòèíêà: img_4]
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
[Êàðòèíêà: img_5]
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.