Not really a success as a storybook, or even as a holiday celebration, Pumpkin Cat is one I'd recommend primarily to those who are fans of Anne Mortimer's feline artwork. Still, the artwork is very appealing, especially for a cat lover, and I particularly liked the final spread. Mouse and Cat, moreover, don't feel very convincing, and simply aren't human enough to be engaging in the activities depicted - anthropomorphism tends to work, in my experience, when the animals in question are simply humans in another skin, or when the entire landscape of the story has been fantastically altered (ala Redwall, and other similar tales) - which continually jolted me out of the story.
If this list of activities doesn't sound particularly scintillating, that's because it isn't, making the narrative feel a little hum-drum. In one final step, Mouse creates a Halloween surprise for Cat. Ostensibly a story about a cat and mouse who cultivate a pumpkin together, it offers a very basic, step-by-step guide to the process, as narrated by Mouse, who instructs Cat in: adding soil to the flower pot, planting and watering the seeds, relocating the plants outside and waiting as they grow, constructing a scarecrow, when the pumpkins first begin to appear, and harvesting the pumpkins when they're ripe. Anthropomorphic animal tales can be a little tricky to pull off, I find, and Anne Mortimer's Pumpkin Cat doesn't quite get the job done, despite its beautiful artwork.
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