by Charles de Lint
This is the original telling of Charles de Lint\’s fable about a girl who gets bitten by a poisonous snake and saved by a bunch of wild cats. To escape death, they magically turn her into a cat. She doesn\’t want to be a cat and her first thought is to find out how to get changed back into a girl. At first she believes that fairies turned her into a cat, but an owl sets her straight. This story is rather brief; the girl goes straight to the spirit of the apple tree and the panther Father of Cats himself for her remedy. It\’s still got a lot of charm and good morale (about repay your debts and making wise choices) but personally I like the expanded version The Cats of Tanglewood Forest better. I\’m glad he wrote it. The illustrations by Charles Vess are better in the second book, too.
I saw this one mentioned on Puss Reboots, which prompted me to pick it up at the library.
Rating: 3/5 52 pages, 2003