The Cat That Saved Christmas

Elizabeth Whitney was an elementary school teacher in Yonkers, New York. In 1951 she wrote this story for the Herald-Statesman newspaper which had a tradition of publishing a serialized Christmas tale each year. The story is a memorial to a real cat, beloved by her three boys who insisted the cat could really “talk”, especially when one of them was ill. It seems the cat played “doctor” by being a sympathetic “sitter”. Perhaps the cat learned this treatment routine when it was revived once with a dose of spirits of ammonia after an unfortunate encounter with a door. This is a book for children of all ages – to either read themselves or to be read to by others.