Think of Cinderella and you can’t help but think of her kindly fairy godmother, the magic-working lady usually depicted as grayhaired and matronly. But the
Cinderella story in some of its older forms had no kindly
lady: the magical being who aided poor Cinderella was a cat—not at all surprising when you consider that cats were associated with the occult and magic. (An obvious question, though: did the cat turn Cinderella’s mice into horses so he wouldn’t be tempted to eat them?)
