Category Archives: Cats

369Z: Kid’s Picture Book About Too Many Cats Living in a Grocery Store Until They are Given Away to Customers (Solved!)

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I am hoping you can help me. My mom read a book to me as a kid but I cannot remember the name or find it on Google for the life of me. It’s driving me crazy! 
It is a picture book about a man who owns a grocery store and a cat lives there (or comes to live there at the very beginning maybe). More and more cats come to live at the store until they are causing all kinds of trouble for customers, like knocking stuff over. I remember one page was a drawing of a cat popping out of the fish kept in the ice section and scaring a customer. The store owner decides to give away a cat with every bag of groceries purchased. One page is a customer (an older woman I believe) taking home 2 cats with 2 bags. The bags are brown paper bags. It ends with the store owner only keeping the original cat. I think the original cat was an orange tabby but I am not sure about it, sorry.

I remember the pictures take up the page or at least most of it.

It was a softcover book (or at least my copy was).

My brother and I were born in 1993/95 and both remember it so I’m guessing it was read to me in the late 90’s or maybe early 2000s. I think it wasn’t an older book when I read it because of the drawing style- at least it didn’t look old fashioned. It’s a colorful, but not unrealistically colorful picture style. Not overly artistic/beautiful. Just fun, clear, and kid-like pictures. 

The book is in English, but I don’t know where it was published.

I’m guessing it was not a super popular book because I have googled it like crazy and can’t find it.

369W: Illustrated Children’s Book with Child-snatching Witch

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It was a large hardback colour illustrated book. The story features a boy, a girl and a dog or cat, I think they have to stay inside because it’s raining. I think the girl is trying to scare the boy by telling a story about this witch that snatches children. The witch rides around on a vacuum cleaner like thing I think. I vividly remember the illustrations being the main focus, some taking up the entire page and I think some pages had special printing like glow in the dark patches. I think the girl was emphasising how she wasn’t scared of all these fantastical things going on and I definitely remember at the end of the book she is scared by a spider or mouse.

I read this book as a child, but I can say for certain when, I think the time frame for when the book was released is 1985-2005 though could be earlier. It was in the UK if that makes any difference.

It’s been bothering me a lot because every time I try to search it I end up getting the same results of Badjelly the Witch, Terry Pratchett’s The Witch’s Vacuum, Winnie the Witch, The Wednesday Witch, The Littlest Witch, etc – it isn’t any of these.

368Y: Mouse in Old Lady’s House (Solved!)

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Looking for a children’s book I read in the early 2000s. Hardcover story book with illustrations, possibly in watercolor. The book was tan with a dark brown spine, the lettering was gold. The story is about an old lady living her peaceful life, drinking her coffee/tea, eating a slice of spice?/chocolate? cake, and reading her book every night. One night she finds a mouse in her house, who I think ate her cake and chewed her book, which sends her to bed stressed. The next day, she buys a cat to get rid of the mouse, but the cat ends up being too lazy and sleeps all day. Then she gets a dog, but the dog just runs around and makes a mess. Then she gets an owl to hunt the mouse, but it keeps her up all night flying around. Then a snake, and so on. She keeps buying animals to solve the mouse problem until her house is in chaos, but the mouse is still there. The story ends with her getting rid of all the animals and eventually making friends with the mouse and serving it it’s own tiny cup of tea and it’s own tiny slice of cake every night with her and they live happily ever after. I have Googled things like “children’s book old lady mouse in house” and variation of that for hours with no luck. Send help!

366L: The Mouse’s House by the Waterhole

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I’m trying to find a children’s book my mother read me over 50 years ago.

I remember vividly.

The mouse tells all the animals at the waterhole:

There’s a creature in my house yelling and screaming and throwing the furniture out of the windows.

He says this to lions, tigers, giraffes.  In the end, it turns out the creature is  an owl that the jungle animals trumpet and roar at, and it flies out of the mouse’s house in the tree.

Then, the lions realize they are hungry, and the giraffes and zebras etc. run away before the lions and tigers can get them.  The mouse returns to his house in the tree.

366A: Fairy tale I read in the 1970’s

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I’m trying to find the name of a book I read when I was a kid, what I can remember of the story is:

A group of friends set off on an adventure. Along the way they find a magic carpet or rug that when rolled out, magically produced a feast. They then came upon a cat that when stroked began to purr and pearls popped out of its mouth. The third magical item the found was a stick or switch that they didn’t know what magical purpose it had.

An unscrupulous inn-keeper saw them using the carpet and the cat and stole them. He didn’t know what the switch did either but figured it must do something. He found that, when he stole it, the magic stick beats dishonest people until they confessed their crime.

That’s all I can recall – if anyone can solve the puzzle and let me know the title and who wrote it, I would be most grateful.

365W: 1970s(?) book about kid spies

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I am looking for a book that is a children/tween/teen book from the 60’s or 70’s (I borrowed it from the Bookmobile in the very early 80’s) about 3 or 4 teenagers who fly a glider and get involved in a spy plot where an organization (maybe called Chaos or similar acronym) with a plan to put a memory drug into the water supply. Originally they are set astray by misinformation that it is going into the milk supply. I think one boy is super athletic and one is the brainy one. There is one part where they fly the glider over a compound and later break in. It is guarded by a lion that has been fed the drug and doesn’t attack them but is reliving a memory. It turns out the parents of one of the kids are actually spies and assist them in the end.

365I: Zoologist Couple Explore Animals With Son and Daughter

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My fourth grade teacher (in about 1971) read to our class a book about a zoologist couple and their two children (a boy and a girl) who went on an expedition together as a family to the Amazon jungle to discover animals. I think for a zoo, but maybe not. Each chapter was about a search for a different kind of animal (like an armadillo) describing its nature and its habits. The children had some thrilling adventures – for example, with a jaguar – from which they were rescued by their parents. It was a series because I remember that there was another book where they went to Africa.

364W: Not Bath Salt, but Crack

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This book is set on some sort of island/plantation. Written in 80s or 90s. Young woman goes there and discovers a mystery which in the end turns out to be an underground crack or meth manufacturing ring operating in the area. At one point she sees her cat playing with a crack rock but she believes it is a bath salt at the time.

363O: A picture book about a house with too many books

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I am searching for a picture book I really loved as a child, but neither my mother nor I remember the title. It was published, we think, around 1996 (it was given to me as a gift around then). It was about a house with so many books, they piled up to the ceiling, they used books as furniture, and so on. It is a little like the 1980s book TOO MANY BOOKS, but with a very different aesthetic. More pastel or oil painting style art, full color full page paintings, no white space. There were cats and, we think, two ladies (maybe librarians?) who live in the house. I remember being enchanted and a little creeped out, in terms of vibe. We think it was either 8×8″ or 8×10″. We hope you can find it, because we want to give it to a friend who is expecting a baby! 

363N: Girl Witch and the Ferris Wheel (Solved!)

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The book I am looking for must have been published before 1994 at the very latest, and I would think after 1975 although it could be earlier. It’s a children’s chapter book. The main character is a girl child with magic who is learning to be a witch: she lives in a cave with I think her grandmother/s and/or aunts who are old witches, and who are pretty grumpy and uncomfortable. She sneaks out one night and discovers a fairground nearby, and rides on the ferris wheel. (She might make a human friend, which isn’t allowed, and there might be a cat, but I’m not sure about those.) She decides to show her older female relatives that humans can have nice things, and I think she steals some of the ferris wheel cars and puts cushions and warming spells in them so her older female relatives will have nice warm places to sit? I think the cover was illustrated, but not super cartoon-y. I have googled and googled and found nothing.