Gobbolino the Witch's Cat

“Don’t cry, brother. I will help you this time, just for once!” said Sootica, and with a few deft twists of her paw the spells fell apart and lay in neat piles upon the cavern floor. “There, that is how it is done! Thus! – and thus! – and thus! Now you will know for another time! Goodnight, brother, and try to be a better cat, or my mistress will certainly throw you down the mountainside!”

“Yes, sister!” replied Gobbolino meekly, as he too curled up and slept again.

The next night the witch set Gobbolino to catch a hundred lizards for her in the rocks round the cavern. She wanted to make a very strong kind of spell, and in order to make it she must have a hundred lizards first.

So while she and Sootica flew away on the broomstick Gobbolino trotted out among the rocks, but although he saw thousands of lizards, green, scarlet, and blue ones, all frisking about in the moonlight, he could not catch a single one.

They knew all the tricks he had learned as a kitten, for they had not lived in witch-country for nothing.

When he turned himself into a piece of cheese they laughed at him and squealed like mice. When he changed into a fly they mocked and danced about the rocks like a thousand bluebottles. When he became invisible they held their sides and told him just exactly where he was hiding. Not one would come within a paw’s length of him.

At last, tired out, Gobbolino crept into the cavern and fell asleep, and there his sister Sootica found him when she returned at sunrise with her mistress the witch, who went straight to sleep, wrapped in her cloak in the corner.

“Brother! Brother! Wake up, brother!” cried Sootica, shaking the sleeping Gobbolino with her paw. “Where are the hundred lizards my mistress wanted? Don’t you know she will throw you down the mountainside if she does not have them by sundown?”

“Oh, I couldn’t catch them, sister, indeed I could not!” sobbed Gobbolino, waking up in a hurry. “I tried and tried! They mocked and laughed at me, and would not come near me! I never even caught one, sister, and oh, my goodness, whatever is to become of me?”

“Don’t cry, brother! I will help you, just this once!” said his sister Sootica, trotting out into the daylight with Gobbolino at her heels.

Out on the rocks she sat upright looking at the sun and admiring her shadow and very soon the lizards peeped out in their thousands to look at her.

“I can see you all,” said Sootica sedately. “I came out to look at you and to catch a hundred of you, if I can, for my mistress to put in her spell.”

“Oh, you can’t catch us!” said the lizards, wriggling with delight. “Your stupid brother has been at it all day, and he hasn’t so much as touched our tails!”

“Catch you indeed!” said Sootica with great contempt. “Why, I should not even try! For one thing, I do not expect there are fifty of you, far less a hundred, that are fine enough for what my mistress requires!”

This made the lizards very indignant.

“Fine enough?” they chattered. “Why, look at me! – and me! – and me! – and me!” and they came scuttling out of their holes to show Sootica how fine and handsome they were.

“Why, yes!” she said. “You will do – and you! – and you! – and you!” So saying she scooped up the first hundred that showed themselves in her paw, and stalked with them into the cavern.

“Why, how clever you are, sister!” said Gobbolino admiringly, trotting at Sootica’s heels. “I played all the tricks I knew upon them, but they would not come near me!”

“Ah! You would never catch such lizards as these by witches’ tricks,” said Sootica wisely. “They live too near our cavern and are always in and out – they pick up everything. Go to bed now, brother, and try to be a better cat. Good-day to you.”

On the third night the witch told Gobbolino to do nothing but stir the cauldron all night. She was brewing her great spell, and before she left the cavern she told the young cats about it.

“Far, far away from here there is a castle with a princess in it,” she said. “Tomorrow she will be twenty-one. Twenty-one years ago, when she was born, her parents did not invite me to her christening. Now I am going to have my revenge. When this spell is ready I will mould it in the form of a golden dove. This I shall take her as a birthday present, dressed in my best clothes so she will think me her fairy godmother. But the moment she holds it in her hands the dove will peck her, and she will fall asleep for a hundred years. Then her parents will be sorry they did not invite me to her christening.”

“Oh, how beautiful, mistress! How beautiful!” cried Sootica clapping her paws in delight, but Gobbolino’s blue eyes grew round with horror and dismay.

“Unless the spell is put upon her on her twenty-first birthday, it will have no power over her,” said the witch. “And in order to be ready it must boil all night. You must stir it, Gobbolino, and never stop a moment, or it will be spoiled.”