If Cats Could Fly

This story begins very whimsically with a couple of extra-terrestrials gate-crashing Earth's ecology and grating two cats the gift of flight. The ramifications of this episode, however, make much tougher reading. As the cats discover that the race to which their kindly owners belong is guilty of such casual atrocities as factory farming, vivisection and wholesale environmental thuggery, it becomes apparent that the only moral response to such evil is violent retaliation. The book is not the lighthearted fancy that the cover suggests, though Westall does manage to maintain a humorous aspect to this anguished tale. It invites the reader to view human behaviour from an oblique angle and provides a thought-provoking adventure story which older children should enjoy reading on their own.