December 09, 2012

Helen Wise Brown: A Pussycat's Christmas

First there was no sound.
And then there was some.
For when everything is quiet,
you can hear things far away.
From the sky with a sound
like steady whispering
came the snow — that sound of snow.

Helen Wise Brown is best known today for Goodnight Moon, but she's written many charming children's books, including this Christmas poem describing a housecat's Christmas Eve.

Like any child's, the pussycat's Christmas is filled with quiet sounds and intense scents and much pouncing. As an adult, you might say snow has no sound, or it's the sound of snowplows, the swish of cars, crunching boots on the sidewalk. But a pussycat (and a child) knows that snow fall has a sound, of snowflakes piling on snowflakes, something just on the edge of hearing. It can be heard only when standing in the middle of the falling snow, without worrying about slipping or shoveling, and losing yourself in the sight of uncountable snowflakes falling fom the sky.

Christmas happens arround pussycat much like it happens around children. Carolers arrive, sleighs ride by, tangerines appear and presents are wrapped. She enjoys the fire that's been lit, and looking at the tree with its jewel-like decorations. And there is lots of pouncing: in the snow, on the crackling tissue paper.

Brown wrote A Pussycat's Christmas in 1949. My edition was re-printed with new illustrations by Anne Mortimer in 1994, who apparently specializes in cats. Mortimer captures the sweetnes one expects of a pussycat, and every cat's expectation when waiting for something, anything, to happen..