The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly
SynopsisPlot
Her wings burdened by an oil slick, a seagull struggles to the nearest port to lay her final egg. Exhausted, she lands on a balcony where Zorba the cat is sunning himself. She extracts three extraordinary promises from him: that he will watch over the egg, that he will not EAT the egg, and that, when it's time, he will teach the baby gull to fly. The first two promises are hard enough, but the third one is surely impossible. Isn't it?
Story
About this book
A seagull caught in an oil slick uses her last strength to reach the port city of Hamburg, where she lands on the balcony of a large black cat named Zorba. Before she dies, she asks him for three promises: to look after her egg, to resist eating it, and to teach the chick to fly once it hatches. Zorba agrees, and the story follows his efforts to honor each promise in turn, with help from a small band of neighborhood cats.
Luis Sepúlveda, a Chilean writer who spent much of his life in Europe, published this short fable in 1996. The book is written for younger readers but carries themes that apply well beyond childhood. Responsibility, difference, and the courage to attempt something outside one's nature all run through the plot. The cats must figure out how to raise a bird that is nothing like them, and the young gull must eventually trust a world she was not born into.
The setting matters to the story. Hamburg's rooftops, harbor, and rain give the fable a specific geography rather than a vague fairy-tale backdrop. Sepúlveda keeps the tone gentle and direct, letting the animal characters carry real emotional weight without sentimentality.
