The Improbable Cat
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A thrilling, mesmerizing tale of one family’s infatuation with a supernatural cat, from New York Times bestselling children’s author Allan Ahlberg.
“Exquisitely crafted and creepy.”—The Times UK
This kitten was entirely unconnected, had popped up out of nowhere, was nobody’s. Only now, of course, he was ours.
It all begins when David's family takes in a stray kitten. At least, that's what the creature appears to be: innocent and small, everyone in the Burrell family immediately takes a liking to the new household member. Except, of course, David, who is allergic to cats, and his faithful dog, Billy. Almost instantly, they sense something terribly amiss.
When David returns from a school camping trip weeks later, he comes home to find the cat has grown… a lot. The house is dark and neglected, and his parents don’t seem to mind. In fact, it’s as if they are under the cat’s spell, only catering to his needs. The only one unaffected, David concocts a plan to rescue his family—but will it work?
Suspenseful in nature and with black-line drawings by Peter Bailey throughout, The Improbable Cat is a sweeping novel that reads like a fairytale—one that is improbably hard to put down.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Davy, the narrator of Ahlberg's (Each Peach Pear Plum) curious, dark tale tells of an event that occurred when he was 12, "something crazy impossible horrific." He describes how his father, mother and sister become "besotted" with a kitten that limps onto their lawn. In no time at all, the boy notices peculiar goings-on. The new pet grows from a feline that fits into a flowerpot into a cat of monstrous proportions. His mother abandons her activism work, behaves "like a zombie" and takes up smoking. His normally nattily dressed father now looks scruffy and begins drinking sherry. His sister sits on the sofa, patting the cat, her face flushed, "her eyes heavy and glazed." Spellbound, all three cater to this TV-obsessed cat's every whim as the house grows increasingly gloomy ("A kind of gauze hung over things") and Davy begins to suspect that the hypnotic pet is "a dangerous creature." The tale's violent denouement involves a cat-and-dog showdown during which the house catches fire, and the cat hurls itself through a window and is hit by a lorry (it lay "crushed and mangled, flattened between a giant tanker and the Co-op Bakery wall)." Sprinkled with Briticisms, the narrative features some snappy writing, and cross-hatch pen-and-inks nicely dramatize the enigmatic developments. Yet this oddly inconclusive and eerie novel may bewilder readers more than entertain them. Ages 10-up.
