When Harry first met Miss Elphick, he was just a little dazzled.
He really had never seen such a beautiful cat.
Miss Elphick was a tiny, pure-black cat. At first glance, she looked like a kitten, because she was simply so small.
She was only the size of a palm, and her fur was black all over. If she closed her eyes at night, she would be impossible to find!
A pair of large glasses sat on her tiny face. She was practically the definition of cute.
It was not that Harry did not know cats were cute, but he really had never seen one this adorable. Miss Elphick's cuteness utterly overwhelmed him.
They could hardly be blamed. Although there were quite a few cats at Hogwarts, those had all been left behind by students many years ago.
They were all grown cats.
Besides, their own Head of House might be among them from time to time, so they did not have much chance to get close to them.
As for the two cats they could more easily encounter in their daily lives, Mrs. Norris and Crookshanks, they were the very opposite of cute.
Even the large cats Mrs. Figg kept in Harry's neighborhood on Privet Drive, which were especially clever thanks to their Kneazle ancestry, were nowhere near as adorable as Miss Elphick.
"Is this a black-footed cat?" Hermione once again displayed her extraordinary academic prowess. According to her, she had been rather bored during the previous summer holiday because she could not use magic, so she had browsed the Encyclopedia Britannica.
And, as was usual for Hermione, once she had read something, she remembered most of it.
So she was now not only Hogwarts' academic prodigy, but also extremely knowledgeable about many things in the Muggle world. Harry,