Mystery of the Green Cat by Phyllis Whitney, 1957.

Things just haven’t been the same for twins Andy and Adrian Dallas since their mother died two years ago. Now, their father has remarried to a woman he met through his work, and Adrian has been having an even harder time coping with it than Andy has. The twins have always been different from each other, not identical in appearance or personal interests, but now, Adrian is frequently angry and moody, and he’s getting on Andy’s nerves.

Their new stepmother, Emily, isn’t bad, and Andy can tell that she’s trying hard to be nice to them so that they’ll like her, but it does make the boys uneasy that their father seems to be having an easier time moving on from their mother’s death than they are. Also, Emily has two daughters, Jill and Carol, who have been living with their grandmother. Now that Emily has remarried, Jill and Carol are coming to live with her, her new husband, and the two boys in San Francisco. Emily has been saying that they’ll all be one big family now, but all of the children have misgivings about it. The twin boys have never lived with girls before, and they’re not looking forward to having a bunch of girly stuff around or Carol practicing her dancing in their new house. Meanwhile, the two girls aren’t sure that they’re really looking forward to suddenly having a couple of brothers. Carol is optimistic and thinks it might be fun, but Jill remembers that she hasn’t gotten along with the brothers of some of her friends. This new blended family is a major adjustment for everyone.

Adrian is so angry and upset about the coming of the girls that he refuses to go meet them at the airport with the rest of the family. Andy goes, although he is uneasy about meeting his new stepsisters, and Jill can tell that he’s not really happy to see them. Andy’s father explains Adrian’s absence by saying that he had a summer school art project to work on, although he does warn Jill that Adrian might need some time to get used to being around girls because he doesn’t make friends easily. Jill bluntly asks if that means that Adrian doesn’t want them around, and her stepfather says that it’s more that Adrian is still mourning his mother and having trouble adjusting to his new stepmother. But, he adds that he and his sons have really been lonely since his first wife’s death, and they’ve really needed someone like Emily in their lives, and he’s sure that Adrian will eventually realize that. He asks Jill, as the oldest girl, if she would try to make friends with Adrian. Jill’s not sure how she’s going to do that if Adrian doesn’t want to be friends with her. (This is a recurring theme in other mystery stories by Phyllis Whitney. The solution usually involves shared experiences binding people together, and this is partly the case in this book, too.)

The Dallas family house is situated on Russian Hill, and as they approach it, Jill’s mother points out another house higher on the hill, which she calls a “mystery house,” knowing that Jill loves mystery books. Her stepfather says that there are two women living there, Mrs. Wallenstein and Miss Furness. The two women are somewhat reclusive, and nobody really seems to know much about them. Andy says that Mrs. Wallenstein is a baroness, but his father says he thinks that’s just a rumor. The two elderly ladies also have a Japanese family working for them. The wife is their cook, and the husband is their gardener. Later, Jill spots someone spying on the Dallas house, peeking down from a wall surrounding their property, and Andy says that’s probably the daughter of the cook and gardener. Andy and Adrian have seen her around before, although they haven’t spoken to her much.

While they’re all sitting at the table, eating and talking, someone suddenly throws a rock through one of their windows. The rock came from the baroness’s house, so the father of the family says he’s going to call her and talk to her about it. However, when he calls, Miss Furness answers the phone, denies that anyone at her house would do such a thing, and hangs up. The boys tell Jill that this isn’t the first time someone has thrown rocks, but the last time, the rock just landed on the terrace and didn’t break anything. The boys haven’t wanted to tell the parents about the last time. Jill asks why not, and Andy refers to a “green cat” but doesn’t really explain what that means.

Later, the Japanese girl from the house next door stops by and introduces herself to Jill as Hana Tamura. (Hana’s English is imperfect, and this is one of those books where the author tries to write like the character is speaking to reflect the accent. Hana switches her ‘r’s and ‘l’s when she speaks in that stereotypical way Asians in old movies speak.) Hana admits to breaking the window and says that she did it by accident. She was just climbing the wall to see the new children who moved in next door when she kicked a stone loose from the wall that broke the window. She offers to pay for the damage. Jill’s mother says that won’t be necessary, but Hana insists that she accept some money. Jill’s mother invites her to stay and visit with Jill and Carol, but Hana says she can’t because Miss Furness doesn’t like her visiting with neighbors. Miss Furness doesn’t seem to like people much. Jill is disappointed because she could use a new friend in her new home, and Hana is interesting because she’s the first Japanese person Jill has ever met. (That’s interesting to me because Jill and Carol were originally from New York, and I would think that they’d see all sorts of people there.) Before Hana leaves, Jill asks her if she knows anything about a green cat. Hana refuses to answer, but Jill can tell that she’s a little disturbed at the mention of the cat. Jill’s mother is a little concerned that Hana isn’t being allowed to associate with neighborhood children and says that she’s going to try to talk to Miss Furness about it.

It turns out everyone has completely misunderstood the relationship between Miss Furness and Mrs. Wallenstein (“the baroness”). Rather than Miss Furness being the housekeeper for Mrs. Wallenstein, she’s actually Mrs. Wallenstein’s sister and the head of the household. When Jill spots Mrs. Wallenstein watching her with binoculars, Adrian says that she’s done that before and also finally confides that Mrs. Wallenstein was the one who threw a rock at him and Andy when they were on the terrace, not Hana. The “rock” Mrs. Wallenstein threw was actually just a little pebble, and Andy scooped it up, refusing to even show it to Adrian, although he doesn’t immediately explain why.

After a visit to the house next door to deliver a letter for Mrs. Wallenstein that was accidentally delivered to the Dallas house, Jill comes to realize that Miss Furness doesn’t treat her sister well, reading her mail and keeping people from her, and that Mrs. Wallenstein is in need of help. Andy finally explains to Jill that the rock Mrs. Wallenstein threw had a note tied to it, asking them to help her find her “little green cat.” He didn’t want to tell Adrian before because he didn’t think Adrian would take it seriously. The kids aren’t sure what the “little green cat” is, but both Jill and Andy want to help poor Mrs. Wallenstein.

Miss Furness doesn’t really mean to be mean to her sister, but she is extremely overprotective of her and keeps her isolated from other people because she has been suffering from ill health and memory problems. Mrs. Wallenstein went through hard times in her life after her husband died, and she was badly injured in an earthquake in Japan, which is why she’s now confined to a wheelchair. Sometimes, when Mrs. Wallenstein starts reminiscing about the past, she becomes confused about what’s past and what’s present, and it all begins blending into one. Her sister has been trying to shield her from past traumatic memories, but Mrs. Wallenstein has the feeling that there’s something important that she wants to remember, and she can’t quite figure out what it is. The key to unlocking Mrs. Wallenstein’s memory and learning the truth about the past lies in finding the little green cat.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Themes and My Reaction

Adjustment to changing family situations is a common theme in Phyllis Whitney’s young adult mystery stories, but this one is a little different from most. Most books by Phyllis Whitney are told only from the point of view of a girl, using third person limited. Even when boys play a major part in stories, the focus is usually on the girl. This book is told mostly from Jill’s perspective, but Andy is the one who begins the story, giving some insight into how he and his brother are feeling before the girls arrive. Although the boys and girls are separate when the book begins, their feelings toward each other are pretty similar. All of the children are trying to adjust to major changes in their lives and having misgivings about suddenly having new siblings of the opposite sex.

I think it’s also important to point out that, although the story focuses on a blended family, there is no divorce in the story. The two parents who are entering into a second marriage were widowed. This book was written in the 1950s, and in the first half of the 20th century, people didn’t talk about parents getting divorced as much. In children’s books of this time period, single parents and remarriages were usually the result of the death of a parent. It’s not that divorce was never mentioned; it’s just that it wasn’t nearly as prevalent in children’s literature, partly due to the social stigma against divorce at the time. I’ve sometimes thought that, in some ways, it was also probably easier for authors to explain the loss that accompanies a parent’s death, which would not have been the parent’s choice and was just a tragedy that couldn’t be helped, than the reasons why parents would willingly choose not to continue living with each other or why one parent would no longer live with the children. This is different from modern children’s books, where it’s usually more common to see divorced parents than dead ones. In fact, quite a lot of modern children’s books include divorced parents. Both death and divorce involve feelings of grief and loss, but if the loss is from a death that just couldn’t be helped, the author can avoid addressing the painful questions of “why” the separation happened. In real life, the reasons for a divorce can involve complex and sensitive issues that many adults would find difficult to discuss with children, including marital infidelity, emotional neglect, financial problems, addiction, and physical or psychological abuse. There’s never a happy reason for a divorce, so saying that the absent parents in the story died allows authors to skip over all of that. Death is sad, but it’s a little more self-explanatory. Andy and Adrian’s mother died from an unspecified long-term illness, and there’s no need for the characters to explain more than that. I could be wrong about some of my theories here, but that’s the impression that I sometimes get from older books. There is less social stigma surrounding divorce in modern times, and the prevalence of divorce in society has made it increasingly important to address children’s feelings about divorce in children’s literature, which is why there are now more books about it. That being said, the loss of a parent because of death is something that children still experience today, and the author of this story makes some important points about the feelings that someone can experience when they lose someone close to them.

As Jill gets to know Adrian, she comes to learn some of the reasons why he’s really unhappy. It’s partly because, when they moved to the new house after his dad remarried, he and Andy had to start sharing a room to make room for the two girls. Adrian and Andy have very different interests, and sharing the space has been particularly hard on Adrian. Adrian is a tidy person, and he’s very serious about art. He needs space to work on his artwork, and Andy is messy and likes to hoard pieces and parts for building things. Jill starts making friends with Adrian when she figures out how to make a better working space for him, but she upsets him again when she accidentally breaks the vase holding his brushes, which reveals the second reason why Adrian is unhappy. When the family moved to the new house, his father got rid of many of the things that used to belong to his first wife. Adrian has been blaming his stepmother for the loss of many of these sentimental reminders. Adrian doesn’t have many reminders of his mother left, and the vase was one of them, so now he blames Jill and her mother for the loss of that. As all the little reminders of his mother seem to be disappearing and Emily and her daughters are moving into the space, Adrian is afraid of losing all of the memories he has of his mother. It’s a situation that’s somewhat similar to Mrs. Wallenstein’s problem, using physical objects as a reminder of the past.

Mrs. Wallenstein has suffered sadness and trauma, which is part of the reason why her memory is so faulty. However she badly wants to remember some of the things she’s forgotten since her injury in the earthquake because they hold the key to the truth about her husband’s death. He died or disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and his business partner was murdered. Some people claimed that her husband might have actually killed his partner, but Mrs. Wallenstein doesn’t believe that. The clues to what really happened are tied up with the mysterious green cat.

However, part of the story also involves selfishness and self-centeredness. Mrs. Wallenstein’s husband’s business partner was a very selfish man, always needing to be the center of attention and taking credit for things that Mrs. Wallenstein’s husband did, and that’s tied in with the story of what happened to the two of them. In his own way, Adrian is selfish, too. It’s true that he’s still grieving for his mother, but the way he shows his grief is selfish, and Jill finally tells him so. Just because his stepmother isn’t his mother is no reason for him to be constantly cold and rude to her. Adrian is also rude and inconsiderate to other people, including Jill, their new friend Hana, and his own brother. Each of them is also dealing with something hard in their lives, but all Adrian cares about are his own feelings. While they all tiptoe around him, trying to make friends with him and be extra careful of his feelings because he’s “sensitive”, he says rude and condescending things to them or suddenly goes into a moody pout if he’s reminded of his mother’s death and/or his father’s remarriage. As Jill says, he’s sensitive, but only about himself; Adrian has no sensitivity for anyone else’s feelings. He’s even careless with Mrs. Wallenstein’s green cat after he learns that it has no monetary value, not considering what it means to her and her past. For someone who’s hyper-aware of belongings that have meaning for him, it’s an incredibly selfish thing to do. He not only doesn’t try to help the others solve the mystery of the cat, but when he finds out some information on his own, he deliberately doesn’t tell them until he can show off how clever he is while taunting the others about how they’re not as clever as they think they are. I honestly thought that he was going to be more help to the others in the story and reconcile his feelings through their shared adventure, but only Andy does that. Adrian resists right up until the very end, when Emily has a very honest talk with him about his feelings and hers.

I was a little annoyed at the way Hana’s speech was shown in the book because it always annoys me a little when authors try to show someone’s accent through spelling. It often seems to detract from what characters are actually saying, and the r/l swapping when Asians speak has a stereotypical feel to it. It’s not that Asians in real life never do the r/l swap, but it’s usually way overdone when it appears in books and movies, so it gets on my nerves. The real life r/l phenomenon is really based on the fact that Asian languages have a tendency to use the same symbol to represent r/l sounds, and the sound those symbols represent is about halfway between the two, depending on the language. In that case, it’s not really so much “swapping” the sounds as making one sound that is more in the middle than English speakers are used to hearing. The speaker may not actually be hearing the difference if they’re not accustomed to thinking of a difference between those two sounds, while listeners who are accustomed to listening for a difference in those sounds are confused about which of the two sounds they’re actually hearing when someone makes a sound that’s kind of in-between.

That being said, the perceptions of Asians, particularly Japanese people, in the book is favorable. This book was published about 12 years after WWII, so I thought it was nice that the characters were looking at the Japanese characters favorably. Jill is genuinely interested in being Hana’s friend, and Jill’s mother wants Jill to be friends with Hana. Later, Hana tells Jill and the boys a little about her own history, how her parents were married before WWII, but because her mother was unsure about coming to the United States, she ended up staying in Japan without her husband for a time. Hana was born shortly before the war started, and her father was unable to come to see her or bring his wife and child to the United States during the war. In fact, Hana and her mother were only reunited with her father a year before the story starts, so she was 13 years old the first time she met her father. Although the other children in the story have had their share of loss and family problems, Hana’s story about her own life helps to highlight that other people have their troubles, too.

The author, Phyllis A. Whitney, spent the first 15 years of her life in Asia because her father worked for an export business. She was actually born in Japan and also lived for a time in China and the Philippines. Because of all of the travel in her early life, Phyllis Whitney’s books often include travel to various countries around the world, people from different cultures, and children getting used to new homes or living among unfamiliar people, for various reasons.

There are some interesting tidbits of information about Asian cultures in the story, particularly about Japanese culture. I thought the part about how Japanese traditionally calculate age was interesting. There are also some interesting pieces of information about San Francisco and its landmarks. I’d heard of Telegraph Hill before, but I didn’t know the origin of the name until the book explained it.

I liked the book, both for the interesting tidbits of information and for the plot itself. This mystery is one of what I think of as the “mysterious circumstances” type of mystery. That’s a name I made up to describe mysteries where no crime (or at least no obvious crime) has been committed but yet there’s evidence of strange happenings and unknown events that must be figured out. I honestly wasn’t sure what direction this story was going to take when it started out, and I changed my mind several times along the way, but it has a very satisfying ending.