A witch's kitten who wants to be good and be a nice family's kitchen cat, but never quite gets it right. By conforming Gobbolino, Williams asked the reader to accept the world (which is often judgemental, cruel, black-and-white) that he lived in, rather than Gobbolino himself.

Gobbolino by Ursula Moray Williams is the charming tale of a witch's cat who would rather be a kitchen cat.I bought this book so that I could read it to my children, and hope that they would love it as much as I did as a child. The pedlar-woman leaves him in the care of his sister, Sootica, and her mistress, but once again he is unable to complete his tasks.

While his sister Sootica learns how to ride a broomstick and turn mice into toads, Gobbolino sets out to find a family to care for him and a home of his own. He escapes to look for a kitchen home but is distrusted everywhere he goes and blamed for mysterious happenings, such as the farmer's milk turning sour and the orphanage children's gruel turning into chocolate. Although everyone he meets likes him at first, being a witch’s cat means he often gets himself into some tricky situations. Although this book follows the same basic storyline as Williams's previous work, Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse, the tale of Gobbolino is more emotionally involving.

Although it is quite a long book for a younger audience, each chapter is a like a mini story so children could dip in and out of it because they would not have to remember what happened before to understand the entire story. Still, the charm of Gobbolino and the interest of his varied adventures, as well as the deep questions that the book raises and embodies, are more than enough to compensate for the equivocal ending. How Gobbolino finally did become a kitchen cat, and found the love he so desperately wanted, makes for a charming story.