Sharing Pyewacket

My husband reads to me sometimes. It's something that started in the early days of our marriage -- where he would read to me at night for a few minutes because he wanted to share a story with me, and it helped me to go to sleep.

The first book he read to me was The Hobbit -- the precursor to the Lord of The Rings series.

After that, he read the entire CS Lewis Narnia series to me, first starting with The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, including The Silver Chair, The Horse & His Boy, and Prince Caspian.

But recently, he decided to read an old book called Pyewacket to me. It's a children's story about a bunch of cats who live on a street, presumably in England, who decide it's time to get rid of their owners so they can have their houses to themselves.

Their plan works (in large part to the coincidental happenings in the human world that make their people move), but not before their hero and ringleader, crusty old Pyewacket is injured in an accident, and his return to the street they live on comes into question.

My favorite thing about the story is the way the cats understand some human speech, the kind humans who help Pyewacket, and the kitten Pete who longs to be like his hero.

It turns out that the book is a story my husband's parents read to him when he was a kid, an old family favorite right along with watching the 1960s classic Cat Balou. In my family, favorite movies were usually family flicks like Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and books like the Cherry Ames and Nancy Drew stories.

It makes me wonder if I'll ever be able to pass stories like that onto any children in my life, whether they're my own or someone else's.

Who knows. But I love the memories.