Three Little Kittens

Wash Day...A Morality Tale - Where's the Mother Cat?

The illustration portrays the kittens on a white background. On the spring day depicted (green grass, clothes drying outside) there seems little need for mittens. The cartoonish kittens wear fanciful, multicolored coats decorated with a fish motif (a comic touch seen more clearly in a previous illustration). There is no sign of a mother cat in the illustrations. Since this book contains the longer version of the poem, a rat is present in the illustration. Could this be the adult presence or a symbol of trouble to come? Here the kittens are huddled unhappily and guiltily, perhaps with indigestion, wearing soiled mittens behind a large, mostly devoured pie. . The right side of the scene contains a clothesline with three pairs of mittens, and the large, blue, spindly rat that appears to be stealing a pair of pink bloomers off the line. Are these the absent mother's bloomers? The rat smirks while looking back at the kittens and appears to be almost tip-toeing out of view. What could have happened to the mother cat who seems to have disappeared before getting all the laundry on the line?