The Kitchen Cat and Other Stories

First published in 1890, this work is a short story collection by Amy Walton. It is both touching, droll and delightful, with the bond between children and animals as a special theme between the three stories The Kitchen Cat, Sarah's Sunday Out and The Toad in the Hole. 'The whole house in London was dull and gloomy, its lofty rooms and staircases were filled with a sort of misty twilight all day, and the sun very seldom looked in at its windows. Ruth Lorimer thought, however, that the very dullest room of all was the nursery, in which she had to pass so much of her time. It was so high up that the people and carts and horses in the street below looked like toys. She could not even see these properly, because there were iron bars to prevent her from stretching her head out too far, so that all she could do was to look straight across to the row of tall houses opposite, or up at the sky between the chimney-pots. '