Skimbleshanks would later become the title of Lloyd-Webber's next musical. "Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat" (poem) Skimbleshanks Skimbleshanks is a cat character in T. S. Eliot's book of poetry "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" and in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical "Cats". The T. S Eliot poem begins as a parody of Rudyard Kipling's poem "l'Envoi" (also known as "The Long Trail") from "Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses". Compare the first few lines of Kipling's Skimbleshanks is described as living on the Night Mail overnight express train that travels on the British West Coast Main Line (WCML) between London Euston and Glasgow
Practical Magic (novel) Practical Magic (novel) Practical Magic is a 1995 novel by Alice Hoffman. The book was adapted into a 1998 film of the same name. For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally have also endured that fate: As children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their darkened house, their love concoctions and their crowd of black cats. All Gillian and Sally wanted to do was escape. One