What a fabulous quirky constantly inventive writer Sylvia Townsend Warner was! I am already a massive fan of her writing, and The Cat’s Cradle Book collection is really something quite different.

The premise essentially is to tell us the stories, that have been passed down from cats to their kittens for generations. Fairy-tales from cats, giving us, an unusual cat’s eye view of the world. It isn’t a perspective we are used to – and the cynical reader may need to suspend belief and just enjoy the ride. These stories are joyfully different, tapping into our long-held love of traditional stories.

“For ages the Cat language has been catholic, explicit, unvarying. I understand it, you understand it, every child picks up an inkling of it. When cats creep into children’s cradles and old women say that they are sucking the child’s breath, what do you suppose they are doing? Keeping them quiet with a story – and better than their mothers can!”

It is a shame that this collection remains out of print, although this pretty 1960s edition of a collection first published in 1940 seems widely available from the usual places, a perfect gift for a fairy-tale loving cat person. A little warning though cat lovers, a few of the cats in this book don’t survive – but you would probably expect that.

The collection begins with an introduction from the editor of these special tales. This forty-four page ‘introduction’ was my favourite part of the whole book, in which STW describes perfectly, a house, its feline inhabitants in fine and glorious prose. The ‘editor’ comes upon a house, nestled deep in the countryside, here she meets a particularly handsome man, living alongside many cats and kittens. The young man is astounded to find the author can understand the language of cat – far better than she can speak it. The cats have plenty to tell her, introducing her to their kittens, they rub against her in welcome. Our narrator stays to tea, and the remarkably handsome young man begins to tell his own story. Having finished Oxford, the young man embarked upon a diplomatic career, while in Turkey he fell hopelessly in love; with a Siamese cat called Haru. Look, these things happen! Haru is technically the property of the naval attaché’s wife, though Haru soon makes her feelings perfectly clear. Haru captivates the young man; William with her stories. The young man is destined for heartbreak, and thereafter dedicates himself to re-telling the traditional stories of cats.

“The following stories are chosen from the collection of traditional narratives current among cats, made by the late Mr William Farthing of Spain Hall, Norfolk. The selection is the editor’s.”

The stories which follow tell a variety of tales, and not all of them are about cats. Like Odin’s Birds in which we have a couple of ravens competing over the eyes of a corpse; the body a man they have just witnessed two women fighting over. In another we find ourselves among the marquisate of The Castle of Carabas who for generations have been born with a cat’s paw shaped birthmark and a natural horror for cats. Virtue and the Tiger tells the story of a hermit a man of great learning and holiness, and his strange meeting with a tiger, a meeting that will have a profound effect on them both. The Fox Pope tells the story of a fox unwillingly named as the next pope – who enlists the help of a stable-boy to free him from the papacy. The Phoenix; tells the story of the legendary bird acquired by Lord Strawberry a big collector of birds, after his death The Strawberry Phoenix fund is launched, and the bird acquired to be shown – at a price – to the marvelling public. In Bread for the Castle, the lives of a baker and his daughter are changed when a great family comes to the neighbourhood and takes up residence in the castle. The man and his daughter bake night and day to fulfil the order from the castle.

“ ‘Surely she has grown smaller,’ thought the baker. ‘Or do my eyes deceive me?’
Looking at her more attentively he saw that his daughter had changed into an owl.
‘But this is frightful,’ thought the baker. ‘My poor girl, with such brilliant prospects, and such a good daughter into the bargain, so handy and willing! What shall I do without her?’
He opened the oven-door and turned the bread. The bread was alright: nothing untoward had happened to the bread.”

The final story in this collection is Bluebeard’s Daughter, Djamileh is the daughter in question. Her father had been adoring and kind, none of her step-mothers lived long enough to cause her any problems. She had however, inherited her father’s colouring which causes the girl to not want to look at herself in the mirror. Her father dies, and Djamileh guardianship is undertaken by her father’s solicitor, she will inherit everything, and grows up to be very wealthy young woman. In time she marries Kayel, and the couple return to Shady Transports – where as a child Djamileh had lived with her father. The palace still has secrets to reveal.

The Cat’s Cradle Book is a lovely collection, at turns dark and humorous Sylvia Townsend Warner understands perfectly the tradition of old tales passed on, and these stories are wonderfully inventive. ( )

A few years ago I was lucky enough to come across what must have been the collection of a devoted admirer of Sylvia Townsend Warner in a secondhand bookshop. There was a long line of books on a shelf, and I picked up a biographies, letters and several collections of short story. The most intriguing of all those books was ‘The Cat’s Cradle Book’.

It had that interesting title, a very lengthy introduction, and then a generous helping of short pieces with enticing titles.

The introduction is the author’s account of her visit to a lovely house in the country, occupied by a handsome young man and a great many cats. She spoke to the cats that she encountered, and she was scolded by the young man when she had to admit that she understood cat rather better than she spoke it.

He told her that she should learn it properly, that there was no reason why she shouldn’t be fluent. And then he told her his own story, how he came to the house, how his relationship with the many cats who lived there had blossomed, and how he had decided to devote his life to studying and understanding the cultural history of cats.

His greatest discovery was that cats were storytellers; that stories were passed down through the generations, shared between fellow travellers, and might be told to anyone who might care to listen.

“Good heavens, what trouble people will put themselves to in order to avoid a simple conclusion! Do try to be reasonable! For ages the languages of men have kept them apart. For ages the Cat language has been catholic, explicit, unvarying. I understand it, you understand it, every child picks up an inkling of it. When cats creep into children’s cradles and old women say that they are sucking the child’s breath, what do you suppose they are doing? Keeping them quiet with a story – and better than their mothers can!”

He hoped that the stories would be published, that his work would be not an end but a beginning of a whole new academic field. The stories would be published, but he would not live to see it, because the lives of all those who lived at that lovely house in the country were lost in a terrible tragedy.

It was so lucky that he had given copies of some of the stories to his visitor, and that she was able to have then published with her introduction and a simple explanatory note.

“The following stories are chosen from the collection of traditional narratives current among cats, made by the late Mr William Farthing of Spain Hall, Norfolk. The selection is the editior’s.”

Those stories are everything you might expect from cats who have travelled, cats who have observed the world around them and other more foolish creatures. The perspective is wonderfully feline, and though it took me a little while to adjust to a very different worldview I am so glad that I did.

I saw that cats must have walked alongside mediaeval troubadors, that at least one cat must have been looking over Aesop’s shoulder, and that Perrault and other great tellers of fairy tales much have had feline companions.

They are also everything you might hope for from Sylvia Townsend Warner. There is lovely use of language, there is wit, and there is usually more than a simple story. You could skate over the surface of most of these stories, reading them as simple fables or as clever tales, but if you stop and think there is often much more to mull over. A clever allegory, an echo of bigger story, a lesson that humans – and other species – would do well to learn.

I’m sure that her cats must have been very proud of her.

It’s difficult to pick favourites, each tale had its own merits, but I must pick out a few.

‘The Fox Pope’ is a lovely fable that tells of a fox who tries to learn from other animals, who tries to retire and live as a hermit, but who finds he cannot escape from the world expectations of what a fox should be. And that maybe he cannot escape from his own nature.

‘The Magpie Charity’ is a clever account of crows who become trustees of a magpie’s estate and must decide which starving cats are deserving of their charity.

‘The Phoenix Nest’ is a story with a moral that sees the rarest of birds fall into the hands of the proprietor of a ‘Wizard Wonderland’ who failed to appreciate him because he would rather sleep than show off, and who would learn that a little knowledge was a dangerous thing..

‘The Two Mothers’ is a short and moving account of how bereaved mothers of two very different species see that role; and if this story isn’t a very fine allegory I don’t know what is.

If you were to ask me of these are Sylvia Townsend Warner’s best short stories I would have to say no, and note that none of them made it into the thick Virago volume of selected short stories.

But I would also say that is because her best stories are quite extraordinary, and here her hands are a little tied by the very nature of what she set out to do.

There could be no finer tribute to William Farthing and the cats of Spain Hall.

This is a collection of short stories like no other, I loved it, and I suspect that those who live with cats and love fine writing might love it even more. ( )