Gobbolino the Witch's Cat

by Ursula Moray Williams

  “But what will happen to you when you go back without me?” asked Gobbolino.

  “Oh, pooh! I am far cleverer than my mistress the witch!” said Sootica scornfully. “She would never dare touch a hair of my head. Don’t you worry about me, brother, but make up your mind to be a better cat in future. But there! I suppose it is of no use telling you that as things are now!”

  Gobbolino was rather mystified by her words, but he had little breath left for wondering what she was talking about. It was all he could do to cling to the broomstick without falling off as they rushed through the air. It was ten thousand times worse than anything he had ever done before.

  “Oh, please stop, sister! Oh, please! Please! Please!” he begged, but Sootica paid no attention to him at all.

  A little later he was terrified to hear her say:

  “I am going to drop you now, brother. It is time I was returning home!”

  “Oh, no! No! No! Sister! Whatever will become of me?” sobbed Gobbolino, but his sister only said:

  “Don’t be foolish! Do as I tell you, and when I say ‘jump!’ leave go!”

  “Oh, no!” sobbed Gobbolino, clinging all the faster. “I shall be killed, indeed I shall!”

  “Nonsense!” said his little sister Sootica. “Even kitchen cats land on their feet, you know!”

  The next moment she cried: “Jump!” and gave him a little push with her paw.

  For one terrible moment Gobbolino clung wildly, and then he fell, down, down, down!

  Gobbolino did not open his eyes as he fell, for he expected to be killed at any minute. He did not see his sister Sootica flying away on her broomstick back to the Hurricane Mountains, nor the green grass and brown farmland coming up to meet him as he fell, nor the winding river making its indolent way through the valleys and fields.

  He did not even know there was a river, until with a terrible splash the water closed over his head, and then he bounced to the surface again in a flurry of bubbles.

  “Oh, I’m drowning! I’m drowning!” cried Gobbolino, and he began to swim for his life.

  But where as a witch’s kitten he had swum mile after mile as strongly as any little duck, now he found he could only struggle and splash, while the current carried him rapidly down towards the great mill-wheel waiting round the bend, beside the farmhouse.

  It was lucky for Gobbolino that the children of the farm were playing on the bank just above the millrace.

  “Look! Look!” they cried to one another. “Here comes a little cat swimming for its life!”

  “It will get caught in the mill-wheel!” cried one of the little girls. “Quick! Quick! And get it out!”

  Her brothers ran to get a stick, and fished out Gobbolino as they might have fished a plum out of one of their mother’s pies.

  “Oh! Oh! Oh!” they all cried. “He is exactly like our little Gobbolino that came swimming down the river just like that, oh, ever so long ago!”

  “Gobbolino swam!” said the boys. “And this cat wasn’t swimming!”

  “Gobbolino’s coat was nearly black,” said the little girls. “And this one is quite tabby.”

  “But he has three black paws and one white!” they all exclaimed together. “And just look at his beautiful blue eyes!”

  Gobbolino looked at them and purred and rubbed his wet body against their legs. Now that he was really a kitchen cat he found he could not speak their language any longer, but he did not mind, for they were all putting their arms about his neck and calling him their dear, long-lost Gobbolino.

  “Can you still blow sparks out of your ears, Gobbolino? Can you still become invisible? Can you hide in father’s shoe or in the baby’s rattle?”

  Gobbolino shook his head, but they still hugged and petted him and carried him up to the farm, where the farmer’s wife threw up her hands to see him.

  “Father! Father!” she exclaimed. “Just see what the children have found drowning in the millrace! It’s the witch’s kitten come back again!”

  “Witches’ kittens swim, they don’t drown!” said the farmer, coming into the kitchen.

  He took Gobbolino out of the children’s hands and looked at him very carefully while the children crowded anxiously about his knee.

  “That’s no witch’s kitten!” he said at last. “That’s a common kitchen cat, that is!”

  Gobbolino’s grateful purrs almost choked him, while the children sang and shouted for joy at their father’s words. Even the baby in the cradle – who was now sitting up and playing with a string of cotton reels – crowed with delight, so that the kitchen rang with gladness, and no one heard the sound of wheels outside until the door suddenly opened and in burst three boys, each a little bigger than the last, all shouting:

  “We’ve come to spend the day! We’ve come to spend the day! We’ve come to spend the day!”

  The next moment they had hurled them selves on the top of Gobbolino, exclaiming:

  “Oh! Oh! Oh! It’s our dear, our darling, our sweet little long-lost Gobbolino! Oh where, oh where have you been? And why haven’t you come to see us before?”

  It was none other than the three little brothers, who had come to spend the day with the farm-children, as they often did for the benefit of their health.

  The Lord Mayor’s coach was even now rolling away from the door, while the baby, who had stayed outside to pick dandelions, was crawling over the lintel with angry cries at being the last to reach Gobbolino and hug him to death.

  For the rest of that long, happy day the children and their long-lost friend played and gambolled about the farm, and when evening brought the Lord Mayor himself to collect the little brothers they knew that another morning would bring them back to their Gobbolino.

  The farm-children, tired and hungry, trotted into the kitchen, where, beneath the trestle-table laden with good food, a saucer of cream awaited Gobbolino.

  One by one the children went off to bed, the cradle creaked its lullaby, and the farmer’s wife washed the dishes.

  “There are worse kitchens than this, Gobbolino, and worse homes than ours,” said the farmer, filling his pipe. “While there’s a fire on the hearth, there’s a place beside it for you, and a saucer of milk and a bit of fish on Sundays. Is that true, mother?”

  “That’s true, father!” said the farmer’s wife, and Gobbolino purred his gratitude.

  When the dishes were wiped and put away, the farmer’s wife sat in the rocking-chair gently pushing the cradle with her foot as she darned the stockings, and Gobbolino crept quietly into her lap and dozed there. He knew that he had found his home at last and for ever and ever. Nobody would turn him out again. The children would become boys and girls and men and women. The baby would grow up and rock its own baby to sleep in the wooden cradle. The farmer and his wife would grow old and watch their grandchildren and great-grandchildren toddle across the kitchen floor, and every one of them, from the oldest to the youngest born, would always have a friendly word and a place in his heart for Gobbolino the kitchen cat.

  About the Author

  When Ursula Moray Williams was a little girl, she and her twin sister Barbara were sent to bed so early that they used to tell each other stories to pass the time before they went to sleep. After their mother had taught them to read and write, they began to make books – writing new stories and illustrating them with coloured pictures – which they gave to each other at Christmas or on their birthday. They made these “anniversary books” every year until they were teenagers. When they grew up, Ursula became a writer and Barbara a painter, and they remained close – although Ursula lived in England and her sister in Iceland.

  Their parents, who were at one time both teachers, gave the girls and their younger brother the happiest of childhoods. The house where they lived was a huge old mansion lit by oil lamps, with an entrance hall paved in marble and surrounded by glass cases full of stuffed birds and animals – foxes, owls, weasels, jays and a large golden pheasant. The house was crumbling, and Ursula remembered tha
t for their lessons with a governess “we moved from room to room as the ceilings fell on us.” But it was a wonderful place to play in (there was a church organ that had no keyboard but provided a perfect hiding-place) – and in the big park outside they had a much-loved pony and cart.

  In 1928, when the twins were nearly seventeen (they were born on 19 April 1911), they were sent to France for a year to live in a pastor’s house in Annecy in the Alps. There they had to go to school – which they hated – but out of school they enjoyed every moment: swimming, climbing, skiing and picnicking in the beautiful countryside. Ursula describes this time as like living in a fairy tale. When they came home, both sisters enrolled at the Winchester College of Art, but, while Barbara thrived, Ursula dropped out after a year and decided to practise her writing at home. She was encouraged by her uncle, Stanley Unwin (who was the famous publisher of The Hobbit), and her first book, Jean-Pierre, a story set in the mountains of Annecy, was published in 1931 with her own illustrations. She remembers that the book cost just 2s 6d (12½ pence)!

  In 1935 Ursula married Conrad Southey John (always called Peter after their marriage), the great-grandson of the poet Robert Southey. To him she dedicated her best-known story, Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse (1938), written when she was expecting their first child, Andrew. Three more sons followed – Hugh, Robin and Jamie. The four boys were taken out in the afternoons, allowing Ursula to concentrate on her writing for two hours a day, and it was during this time that she created Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat (1942).

  Ursula went on to write over sixty books for children. “I write compulsively,” she said. “During the war years I was cooking for ten of us but I had to write, just as my twin sister had to paint and design.” Her husband died in 1974, but she still lived in the family farmhouse on Bredon Hill in Gloucestershire where she brought up her children so happily. Ursula had many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She died in October 2006.

  Macmillan Classics: breathing new life into much-loved children’s stories

  The Island of Adventure

  by Enid Blyton

  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

  by Lewis Carroll

  Through the Looking-Glass

  by Lewis Carroll

  The Jungle Book

  by Rudyard Kipling

  The Milly-Molly-Mandy Storybook

  by Joyce Lankester Brisley

  Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse

  by Ursula Moray Williams

  Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat

  by Ursula Moray Williams

  The Teddy Robinson Storybook

  by Joan G. Robinson

  Ursula Moray Williams and Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat

  When Ursula Moray Williams created the wonderful Gobbolino, he was not the only one longing for security in a happy, loving home where he could stay “for ever and ever”.

  It was 1940, and in 106 continuous days of German air raid warnings, his author had become used to sheltering with her two young sons under the stairs of their Surrey home.

  Bombings killed eighty-four workers in the aircraft factory where her husband worked and at another nearby, and while he was on duty as an ARP warden, an incendiary blast had hit their garage at home.

  Gobbolino himself was to become a war casualty. For after the first edition sold out, the printing plates and Williams’s own illustrations were lost in the Blitz. Only twenty years later was the book reissued – and became a worldwide bestseller.

  Williams too was to face many crises, yet in her work for children, in many acts of kindness, and in determination, her life became as inspirational as those of her brave, fictional heroes like Gobbolino.

  Ursula Moray Williams (1911–2006) wrote sixty-eight books for children, including classics such as Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse.

  Colin Davison,

  author of Through the Magic Door: Ursula Moray Williams, Gobbolino and the Little Wooden Horse (Northumbria University Press)

  GOBBOLINO

  the Witch’s Cat

  First published in 1942, this classic tale of a very special cat has been delighting children for generations.

  No one could mistake Gobbolino for a simple kitchen cat, with his sparky whiskers and magic tricks, but that’s just what the witch’s kitten wants to be. Instead of learning how to turn mice into toads for the witch’s brew, Gobbolino sets out on a new adventure to find a family and a home of his own.

  Publisher’s Note:

  The publisher has used the first edition of Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat, published in Great Britain in 1942 by George G. Harrap & Co. Limited, for this publication. It is reproduced here complete and unabridged.

  First published 1942 by George G. Harrap & Co. Limited

  This edition published 2014 as part of the Macmillan Classics series by Macmillan Children’s Books

  This electronic edition published 2017 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan

  20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-5098-5817-0

  Text copyright © Ursula Moray Williams 1942

  Illustrations copyright © Catherine Rayner 2012

  Foreword copyright © Joan Aiken Enterprises Ltd 2001

  Author Note copyright © Kingfisher Publications PLC 2001

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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