Sara and Hoppity Find A Cat

Published 1961 by Pelham Books
Illustrated by Marion Wilson
Also published as Sara Et Clopinet Trouvé Un Chat in 1961 by Lausanne

Mummy decides it is an 'outside' day and sends Sara into the garden to play. Sara takes Hoppity with her. She sees a cat on the garden wall. It has fur the colour of toffee and long white whiskers. Sara entices the cat down into the garden and names him Toffee, because of the colour of his fur.

She puts Hoppity onto the cat’s back. The cat stalks up and down the garden, giving Hoppity a ride, which Sara finds so funny that she bursts out laughing. Next, she goes to her bedroom and returns with some of her doll’s clothes. She dresses Toffee in a pink bonnet and a blue dress and puts him in her doll’s pram.

Mummy calls Sara in to lunch, so Sara undresses the cat, which then begins to make its way to the next garden. Sara is concerned that the cat won’t be there to play with after lunch but doesn’t know what to do.

Hoppity says, “Tiddly-tee,” and “Tiddly-tum”, which Sara interprets to mean “put the cat in the tool shed”. This she does, and then goes in to lunch after telling the cat she will bring it something to eat. While eating Sara wonders how she can take some food out to Toffee. There is rice pudding for sweet and when Mummy and Daddy aren’t looking Sara begins to spoon it into the pocket of her apron. This makes a visible stain on the front of her apron and she is concerned Mummy and Daddy will notice. She waits until both are distracted and then returns to the tool shed. There she feeds the rice pudding to Toffee who laps it up until it is all gone. They then spend the afternoon playing.

For the next few days Sara plays with Toffee, locking him in the tool shed at night. She is aware that if Mummy and Daddy knew about Toffee they would make her send him back to his proper home. When Sara played with Toffee sometimes she would put him on the swing and push him back and forth. Sometimes she would put him into the basket of her tricycle and peddle around the goldfish pond. Toffee would spend hours sitting by the goldfish pond, and when a fish would come up for air he would SMACK his paw on the water. But he never did catch any of the goldfish.

One day, a little girl brought her toy dog to the shop for restuffing. The dog wore a collar with a tiny bell on it, which shone like a silver star. Sara thought that it would be lovely if Toffee had a bell to wear too. So, prompted by Hoppity, she creeps into the shop and pulled the bell from the collar. Then, using her hair ribbon, she tied the bell around Toffee’s neck. Before she can stop him, Toffee climbs over the garden wall. Sara becomes upset at this as she is worried about what will happen when Mummy and Daddy find out the bell is missing. Mummy calls Sara in for tea, and later Sara returns to the garden to look for Toffee, but he isn’t there.

The little girl who owns the toy dog returns to the shop. When she collects the dog, she notices that the bell is missing and asks where it is. Mummy asks Sara if she knows where the bell is and tells her to bring it back at once. Sara goes into the garden and searches for Toffee, calling out his name. Noticing that the door of the tool shed is open, she looks inside. There she finds Toffee, curled up asleep. She removes the bell from the cat and locks the shed. She returns the bell to Mummy who fixes it back onto the collar. She also warns Sara not to touch any of the toys in the shop again.

Next morning, Sara fills a saucer with milk to take to Toffee. When she gives it to him, he turns away uninterested. Concerned that he might be ill she makes a bed for him out of old rags she finds in the shed. Later Sara brings Toffee a piece of haddock from her lunch, but again he appears uninterested. That night Sara locks Toffee in the tool shed as usual and goes to bed very unhappy. She asks Mummy what medicines you give to cats when they are ill. Mummy tells her that cats usually get better by themselves but that when they don’t you take them to a vet.

Lying in bed, Sara is worried about Toffee. Prompted by Hoppity again, she decides to look for a vet that very moment, even though it is night time. She puts on her dressing gown, and taking Hoppity, makes her way downstairs. But she trips on the sash of her dressing gown and falls. Daddy hears the noise and comes to see what is happening. He wants to know what she is doing out of bed, and she tells him about the cat. Daddy gets a torch and together they go out to the tool shed. Opening the door to the shed they find Toffee licking three baby kittens! One is black, another is white and the third is toffee-coloured. Sara wants to pick them up but Daddy tells her they are too small. He takes Sara back to her room where she falls asleep with Hoppity in her arms.

Next morning Sara goes to the tool shed and finds that Mummy has put a bowl of milk out for the cats. Sara is called in to breakfast, and Mummy and Daddy question her about the cat. Daddy insists that they must put a notice in the shop window saying that they have found a cat which has just had kittens. Sara bursts into tears at this news. Thinking it would be lovely if no one came to take Toffee away, Sara, prompted by Hoppity, takes the notice out of the window. Then she runs into the garden to play with Toffee and the kittens, happy knowing that now no one will take them away. Later, at lunch, Daddy looks at Sara over the top of his glasses. He mentions how odd it is that the notice had fallen down. This time he has stuck it in the window using EXTRA GLUE-Y GLUE, saying that if it falls down again he will know that someone is being naughty because “notices don’t fall down by themselves.”

Poor Sara. She knows she can’t take the notice down again and that will mean that someone will take Toffee and the kittens away. She is so unhappy at this that she doesn’t feel able to eat her lunch. Mummy tries to cheer her up by telling her that Jimmy is coming around that afternoon to play. Jimmy is a nine year old boy with freckles. This news does cheer her up a little. When Jimmy arrives, Sara takes him out to the tool shed to show Toffee and the kittens to him. To her surprise Jimmy recognises Toffee, calling her “Ginger” and asking where she’s been. Sara realises that Toffee belongs to Jimmy and is so upset that she runs and hides. Later when Mummy calls her in to tea, she can’t be found. Jimmy tells her that when Sara realised the cat belonged to him she ran away and hid. But Daddy knows her hiding place is between the gooseberry bush and the wall, and he goes out to comfort her. Sara tells him she is sad because she can’t play with the cat anymore.

Back in the house, Jimmy thanks Sara for looking after Ginger. Sara shouts that the cat’s name is Toffee and that “Ginger” is a horrid name. Jimmy tells her that he thinks Ginger is a lovely name but that when she has a cat of her own she can call it Toffee. Sara says that she doesn’t have a cat of her own but Jimmy replies, “Of course you’ve got a cat of your own. I’m going to give you one of Ginger’s kittens.” Sara asks Mummy and Daddy if she can accept and they agree that she can. She then asks Jimmy if she can choose which kitten to have. Jimmy consents, and Sara takes the “teeniest weeniest one” because “he’s got toffee-coloured fur!” She rushes out to the tool shed and finds that her kitten has crawled half-way across the floor, just as if he had come to meet her. “You’re mine, mine, mine!” she cries and shows him to Hoppity. She tells him, “We’ve got a kitten of our own to play with. Isn’t it wonderful? A kitten of our own!”

To view all pages of the book, click here.

Notes:
The kitten, Toffee, continues to appear in Meet Sara and Hoppity.

The following was taken from the website, http://deborahharvey.blogspot.com/ and contains Deborah's recollections of the book.

SATURDAY, 1 MARCH 2014

Hotwiring the Past : Sara and Hoppity

The books we are exposed to when very young have a huge influence on us, yet before too long, we are deemed by adults to have 'grown out of them' and they are disposed of before we are old enough to have a say in their fate.

My grandmother, Hilda Hill, gave birth to 11 children between the wars and by the 1960s she had an extensive toy cupboard for the amusement of her numerous grandchildren. My favourites were the red velvet dress in the dressing up box and the books.

There were three books I loved more than any others, all by Roberta Leigh, and they were 'The Adventures of Twizzle', 'Sara and Hoppity Get Lost', and 'Sara and Hoppity Find A Cat'. I recently came across an affordable copy of 'Sara and Hoppity Find A Cat' on eBay, and to my glee I won the auction.

I loved the stories of naughty Sara and her goblin toy, Hoppity, who was always getting her into trouble with his glowing green eyes and his rallying cry of 'Tiddley-tum! Tiddley-tee!', but it's the illustrations that hotwire my past. My favourite was this one, of the cat Sara finds and names Toffee (although she turns out to be called Ginger), studying the goldfish in the garden pond:

It's only now I realise I've been unconsciously copying Sara's hairstyle for the best part of half a century:

Looking back, I think I loved Sara because I wanted to be her. Quite apart from having a goblin toy on whom she could always pin the blame for her misdemeanours, her parents ran a hospital for sick toys, for goodness sake. And no matter how much trouble she got into, her parents always - indisputably - loved her. Even when she has fed the cat all her rice pudding and shut her in the potting shed where she gives birth to kittens in the middle of the night, Sara's smiling daddy still carries her back upstairs to bed. That would never have happened in our house, even if I'd been gooder than good. Which I mostly was.

I've taken 44 boxes of books to the Amnesty Bookshop over the last nine months on account of various changes to my living circumstances. But it seems to me that I can still make room for a few blasts from the past - in fact, as a writer, I'm obliged to, surely? So I shall be looking out for some more Roberta Leigh books, and - if I can find it- the annual of western stories, in comic strip form, which I was looking at when I realised that I could read all by myself - a seminal moment.

And the book of bedtime stories, the cover illustration of which gave me my first glimpse of infinity: two children, sitting together in a boat that is sailing among the stars, reading a copy of the same book, with two children on the cover, sitting together in a boat that is sailing among the stars, reading a copy of the same book, with two children on the cover, sitting together in a boat that is sailing among the stars ...

Tiddley-tum! Tiddley-tee!