by Moe Zilla

Created on: May 16, 2009

Is it Edward Gorey - or is the illustrator just paying him tribute? "The Curious Demise of a Contrary Cat" has the same dark simplicity in its drawings and text. Lynne Berry wrote a story about a witch dressing up on a moonlit night. And like Gorey, there's intense, short sentences, where repeating patterns are part of the fun.

The story follows the witch through an evening of entertaining - during which her cat is no help at all.

"Cat?" said Witch.
"Purr?" said Cat.
"Chair!" said Witch.
"Grrrrr," said Cat.
And that was the end of that.

"Cats make great saucy, spicy characters with such attitude," Berry admits on the book's jacket. She describes her husbands cat as moving "with utter serenity through the chaos of five dogs, completely indifferent to their existence." But the secret of the book's plot may be hidden in her true sentiments about the cat. "[I]t's mostly indifferent to the existence of the people in the house too."

There's gnomes at the party - and a rat steals pie. Each picture brings the witch strange new guests, as the poems loops back to it's funny refrain.

"'Cat,' said Witch, 'fetch me a hat!'
But Cat was busy, chasing a Rat..."

There's lots of things to look at inside the drawings by Luke LaMarca. The Rat escapes from the frame of the illustration on page three, and teases the cat from outside. (And the cat does the same trick two pages later.) There's a five-eyed monster which is never explained. And there's even a pair of striped tentacles in the witch's punch bowl.

The witch tries to greet her guests, server dessert, or play a jig - but as the text bounces along, LaMarca finds a way to make every character look silly. The cat's face is on sideways, like a Picasso. The witch's nose is ridiculously pointy. The rat has round eyes and a slow, pudgy body. And the cat's disobedience is shown with broken pots and an overturned goldfish bowl.

It's obvious the cat's in trouble when the book reaches its final pages. The witch is brewing a spell in a cauldron - and there's a bright flash of light and smoke. She calls for a toad, and the rhyme repeats for the very last time. "'Cat?' said Witch. 'Purr?' said Cat..." But instead of saying "Grrrrr," the cat now says: "Ribbit."

"And that was the end of Cat," the book concludes.

It's jacket tells us that Lynne Berry "wishes no ill" to the cat that lives with her in Nashville. But in her book, it's the rat who gets the last laugh after all.

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