The book is about a cat called Charley which gains amazing and magical powers by tapping a seemingly boring old stone. He is the pet of Jemima, a girl living in a rural Dorset village sometime between the dawn of inter-continental air travel and the emergence of the home computer.
Charley’s powers allow him, among other things, to help two ladies beat eye-operation queues in audacious fashion and pass on a premonition to save men in peril at sea.