The Price by Neil Gaiman, 1997
The magic trick:
Weaving a web of relationships, romance and heartbreak
“The Price” begins like a doddering journal entry about what the local cats are up to today around the house. Before you can blink, it morphs into a battle between good and evil.
And that’s quite a trick on Gaiman’s part.
The selection:
We never seem to have more than eight cats, rarely have less than three. The cat population of my house is currently as follows: Hermione and Pod, tabby and black respectively, the mad sisters who live in my attic office, and do not mingle; Princess, the blue-eyed long-haired white cat, who lived wild in the woods for years before she gave up her wild ways for soft sofas and beds; and, last but largest, Furball, Princess’s cushion-like calico long-haired daughter, orange and black and white, whom I discovered as a tiny kitten in our garage one day, strangled and almost dead, her head poked through an old badminton net, and who surprised us all by not dying but instead growing up to be the best-natured cat I have ever encountered.
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