Scratch Kitten Goes to Sea; Scratch Kitten on the Pirate's Shoulder
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Cover story
This issue’s cover illustration by Ralph Steadman is from Garibaldi’s Biscuits published this month by Andersen Press (978 1 84270 860 6, £10.99 hbk). Ralph Steadman is interviewed by Martin Salisbury. Thanks to Andersen Press for their help with this November cover.
Scratch Kitten Goes to Sea
Mitch Vane
Scratch Kitten on the Pirate's Shoulder
Mitch Vane
The hero of these books, Scratch, is a scruffy ginger kitten with a courageous heart and an adventurous spirit. In the first story, he fulfils his dream of following in his father’s footsteps by becoming a sea cat. He leaves home as a stowaway on board the Silk’n’Spice where he does his utmost to fit in and make himself useful. He reasons that friendship with Peg-leg the cook will earn him some food scraps but he’s reckoned without the cook’s mean streak and blind loyalty to the previous ship’s cat. The first story ends with a cliff-hanger, resolved in the second book, in which Scratch finds himself captured and forced to join a pirate crew. Here, he becomes friends with the captain’s parrot, whose silliness and deafness give rise to all sorts of antics. The stories are warm and funny, made all the more endearing by the kitten’s resilience and good-natured ways.