You can’t move for animated cats this Christmas – meet Judith Kerr’s Mog and Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s Tabby McTat
Mog’s Christmas C4
If you’re under the age of ten, then Lupus Films owns Christmas. Squirrelled away on three cramped floors above a row of shops in north London, the company ’s writers, animators and directors have previously brought children’s classics We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and The Tiger Who Came to Tea to festive television schedules. Now Lupus, which was launched by Camilla Deakin and Ruth Fielding in 2002, is repeating the trick with Mog’s Christmas, Judith Kerr’s much-loved story about the white-bibbed tabby cat that likes to eat boiled eggs and lives with Mr and Mrs Thomas and their young children, Nicky and Debbie.
The 24-minute film features the voices of Benedict Cumberbatch (as Mr Thomas), Claire Foy (Mrs Thomas), Miriam Margolyes (Aunt) and Charlie Higson (Jolly Uncle), and its soundtrack song, As Long as I Belong, written by David Arnold and Oscar-winner Don Black, is performed by Sophie Ellis-Bextor. But the star, of course, is the domestic cat who finds her life is turned upside down when the house fills with people for Christmas.
It all becomes too much for Mog when a strange tree starts moving of its own accord. It’s being carried by Mr Thomas, but Mog doesn’t realise that. “If the tiger from The Tiger Who Came to Tea was the Roger Moore of tigers, Mog is the Father Dougal of cats,” explains Robin Shaw, director of Mog’s Christmas. “She is absolutely lovely but she’s not very bright. So, we laugh at what’s going on but we also see it from Mog’s point of view which is, ‘There’s a giant Christmas tree marching towards me.’”
Mog’s Christmas was first published in 1976 and is the second of 20-odd Mog books. Lupus now has the rights to the entire series. Like The Tiger… it draws on Kerr’s own life at home in Barnes, southwest London, which she shared with her husband, the celebrated television writer Nigel Kneale, their children Tacy and
