The Blue Cat of Castle Town
Catherine Cate Coblentz
 In the early 1830s, in a small town in Vermont, a blue kitten is born. Every kitten must find a hearth, but a blue kitten has the hardest time of all, for he must learn the river's song and then teach it to the keeper of that hearth. His mother is troubled, but notices he has three black hairs on his tail and hopes she can help him evade this quest. She teaches him not to listen to the river, but eventually he cannot help but hear the river talking to him. Irritated, his mother sends him off to learn the river's song and seek his fortune. The river teaches him the history of the town and gives him much useful advice, only some of which he remembers. He first meets a barn cat, whom he ignores, and a girl who slams the door in his face. He reaches the village green, where he admires his own reflection in a well and falls in, only to be rescued by the pewterer Ebenezer Southmayd. Southmayd is old and has given up making his most beautiful work to turn out cheap, shiny trade items. Singing the river's song, the kitten inspires Ebenezer to make one beautiful, perfect teapot according to the old formula. Alas, the pewterer drops dead when it is finished, and the blue kitten must find a new hearth. Next he meets a weaver, John Gilroy, who is doing business with two women. They have brought him linen to be woven, from flax they grew and bleached and spun themselves, and though he is contracted to make salt-and-pepper cloth for Arunah Hyde of the Mansion House, he accepts the job, inspired in part by the river's song. The kitten thinks Gilroy will learn his song, but Hyde shows up, angry and in a hurry, and Gilroy returns to the more profitable work and turns the kitten outside. As his stagecoach is tearing off in a hurry, Hyde scoops up the kitten and carries him off to the Mansion House. There, Hyde is constantly shouting at people to hurry up, make more money, do things faster -- but he also plies the blue kitten with rich cream and delicious salmon, until he grows into a blue cat. Singing the river's song to Hyde, he finds that Hyde has his own song, a dark song of progress and industry and power -- and a plan to decorate the Mansion House's front window with a lovely stuffed blue cat. Fattened up on delicious food, the blue cat barely escapes. Hyde makes one last snatch for him and pulls the three black hairs out of his tail. The last bowl of cream must have had some poison in it, for the blue cat falls ill and is rescued by the very barn cat he ignored on his first visit. She is a motherly soul and a good mouser, sharing her bowl of milk and her daily catch with him, even after the birth of two yellow kittens. The blue cat recovers physically over the course of the winter, but he has forgotten his song. Come spring, he sets forth, promising to come back and repay the barn cat and the girl Zeruah, who seems sad and lonely when she brings the cats their milk. He finds the town possessed by Arunah's song, and he searches high and low for the one he has lost. Creeping into the church, he meets the carpenter Thomas Royal Dake, who has it in mind to build a truly beautiful pulpit, but has been told by the building committee to do it more cheaply. He brings the blue cat home to his wife Sally, and talks with her about the financial sacrifices they will have to make if he goes ahead with a more expensive pulpit. Dake, it turns out, knows the river's song, and the cat relearns it from him. Sally agrees that he should build the pulpit of which he dreams, even though it will be difficult for the young family. The blue cat does not immediately resume his quest, but remains with Dake through the building of the pulpit in white pine and cherry. Then he returns to Zeruah Guernsey, the sad girl on the farm, and to his friend the barn cat, who is very proud of her kittens. Zeruah is lonely and sad, and believes she is ugly. She rebuffs the blue cat at first, then allows him into the house. She listens to the river's song, but makes no move to sing it for some time. Gradually, she begins thinking and talking to the cat. She visits the church and sees Dake's altar, and passes the shop where Southmayd's last teapot still sits in the window. Finally she begins to put aside her sadness and begins work on an embroidered carpet. Into the carpet she puts flowers from the woods and from her dead mother's garden, her father's favorite white rooster, everything of her world. As she begins to create the carpet, she also tends her house and her garden, and sets a rug by the bare hearth for the blue cat. She embroiders the blue cat into the carpet, and he realizes what he must do to thank his friend the barn cat. One by one, he brings her kittens into the house for Zeruah to add to the carpet. Zeruah's carpet becomes a legend in the town, and many people stop by to see it in progress. The blue cat sings to them, and gradually Arunah Hyde's song loses its power as the townspeople rediscover the importance of making things with their hands, creating "beauty and peace and content."