Grizabella like a crooked pin." The character of Grizabella featured in an unpublished poem that T. S. Eliot wrote for his godchildren, intending to include it in "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats". However, as his widow, Valerie Eliot pointed out, he thought it was too "sad for children" and so did not include it in the finished work. Valerie Eliot came to the 1980 Sydmonton Festival concert where Andrew Lloyd Webber premiered some of his settings of the Old Possum poems, and gave him the paper with the fragment of Grizabella written on it. From there Lloyd Webber and director
Millions of Cats suggests letting the cats decide which one should stay with them, asking "Which one of you is the prettiest?" This question incites an enormous cat fight, frightening the old man and woman, who run back into the house. Soon, all is quiet outside. When they venture out, there is no sign of the cats: they'd apparently eaten each other up in their jealous fury. Then, the old man notices one skinny cat hiding in a patch of tall grass. It had survived because it didn't consider itself pretty, so the other cats hadn't attacked it. The couple take the cat