“‘The only real cat is a gray cat,’ she said as she picked him out, the grayest of the grays, from the batch of new kittens, peering at him through her spectacles while he peered back through his squinty kitten eyes. Then quick as a wink, he was inside a covered basket, howling up a storm as she carried him home on her arm.”

This enchanting true story is illustrated with the kind of beauty that even Anne Shirley would approve of. Drawing from Montgomery’s journals, Lynn Manuel elegantly tells the story of Maud’s grey cat Daffy. And Janet Wilson paints pictures that are rich in color and texture and beg the reader to get lost in them. Lucy Maud and the Cavendish Cat gives us an intimate view of Maud’s life while living with her grandparents in Cavendish, the move to Park Corner, and her subsequent move to Ontario to live with her new husband.

“In the evenings, her pen would scratch like a branch against the windowpanes, or her fingers would peg away with a click-click-click of the keys on the old typewriter that didn’t make the capitals plain and wouldn’t print ‘w’ at all. And all the while, Daffy would doze at her feet, while grandmother sewed or read at the other side of the kitchen table.”

Just as the cover suggests, Daffy was Maud’s constant companion as the young author scribbled away and worked out what ultimately would be Anne of Green Gables. It tells of her long hours of writing, the long cold winter, and the death of Maud’s grandmother.

“The grandmother-who-hated-cats was asking for him, stroking his gray fur and murmuring softly . . . then she closed her eyes for the last time . . . and so they came to this place called Park Corner to stay with relatives who were strangers to him – and one was a little boy who lugged cats about upside-down!”

Soon, Maud marries and leaves her cat behind. Daffy misses his Maud and pines for her. One day, however, the boy shuts him in a box and won’t let him out. “The box jiggled and stocked, thumped and hopped. There was a clanging and a hissing and a whistling . . .” But, once “an eternity passed before he looked up and saw the eyes behind the spectacles, and quick as a wink, he was in Maud’s arms.”

Lucy Maud and the Cavendish Cat is a treasure and the illustration is beyond beautiful.