Katje the Windmill Cat

Using a historical legend from the Netherlands, about a cat and human infant who survived the terrible fifteenth-century St. Elizabeth's Day flood together, as her starting point, Gretchen Woelfle weaves a heartwarming tale of family change and adjustment in Katje, the Windmill Cat, one in which

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the feline of the family finally finds her place. Devoted to her human, Nico the Miller, Katje was a much-indulged only cat, until the day Nico came home from the village with his new wife, Lena. A tidy soul who liked to clean, Lena had little patience for Katje (or anyone else) tracking flour into her house. When Nico and Lena's baby was born, the new mother, constantly worried about this and that (would Anneke's cradle tip over? would the cat make her sneeze?), drove Katje away from the infant. Retreating to the mill, Katje lived for a time in 'exile,' until a catastrophic flood, and Katje's balancing act, in saving little Anneke, convinced Lena that this was one cat she wanted around.

Unlike some of the friends who recommended this one to me, I was not unduly put off by Lena's initial resistance to having Katje around, nor did I find her conspicuously cruel. If anything, I thought this was probably a fairly realistic depiction of how a new housewife, one determined to keep her new domain clean (and boy, what an incredible amount of work that involved, before the advent of modern conveniences like electricity and heated water!), would react to an animal companion being allowed free reign in the house. Lena's actions, in separating Katje from her newborn baby, Anneke, also didn't strike me as maliciously intended, but rather as the result of a first-time mother's almost paranoid worry - would Katje make the baby sneeze? would she tip over the cradle? Of course, Katje's sadness, in being parted from her long-time human companion, Nico, was very poignant, and I felt that the integration of a new member (Lena) into the family could have been handled better, but I was very cognizant, while reading, of how recent an attitude that is, and how reliant on the contemporary idea of animals as part of the family.

In any case, the sad set-up pays off in the end, because Katje's balancing act, on Anneke's water-borne cradle, saves the day, and all is happily resolved. This too, while disturbing to some, seemed realistic to me. Sometimes, people need something extraordinary to happen, in order to be jolted out of their previous ideas, and ways of looking at things. In short, the narrative of Katje, the Windmill Cat really worked for me, and in combination with the artwork, which was simply gorgeous, made for a lovely reading experience. Nicola Bayley, who also illustrated The Mousehole Cat, knows her kitties, and that really comes through in the artwork here! I also liked some of the little details in the paintings, and the delft-looking tiles that form a vertical border, on the page. Highly recommended, to all young cat lovers, and to readers who enjoy fairy-tale style stories, where things change for the heroine because of momentous events.

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