Review of The Three Lives of Thomasina (1963) by Siobhán M — 11 Jun 2007

A charming, excellently acted live-action Disney drama about a young Scottish girl's love for her cat, THE THREE LIVES OF THOMASINA deals with complex issues of death and parent-child relationships without being scary or needlessly sentimental.

Mary MacDhui (Karen Dotrice), lives in a rural village with her veterinarian father Andrew (Patrick McGoohan), a bitter, faithless widower who is criticized by his assistant for having no feelings towards the animals he treats.

Mary?s only real object of affection is her self-absorbed marmalade cat, Thomasina (enhanced by the narration of Elspeth March). When the town blind man?s dog is critically injured, Andrew does his duty.

At the same time, however, Thomasina has fallen ill with tetanus, his frantic daughter interrupting the dog?s surgery and begging Andrew to save her. Impatient and busy, Andrew euthanizes Thomasina. The distraught Mary is temporarily consoled by an elaborate funeral march planned by her concerned friends (Jack Stewart, Matthew Garber, and Denis Gilmore), but is so angry and sad that she disowns Andrew.

Thomasina herself soon finds herself in kitty heaven, in a memorable scene of Egyptian cat-goddess statues and hundreds of regal-looking Siamese. However, she is back with the living again when a young, solitary woman who cures sick animals named Lori (Susan Hampshire), thought to be a witch, notices at the grave site that the cat is not, in fact, dead, the act helping the lives of Lori, Thomasina, Mary, and her father, to become entwined.