Bungle, The Glass Cat
Bungle, the Glass Cat is a character in The Oz books of L. Frank Baum.
Bungle first appears in The Patchwork Girl of Oz, the seventh of Baum's fourteen Oz books. The magician Dr. Pipt, in testing his Powder of Life, animates an ornamental glass cat figurine. His wife Margolotte names it Bungle. The Glass Cat is transparent, except for its hard ruby heart and its pink brains, which look rather like a collection of marbles and can be seen working in the cat's head.
In personality, Bungle is almost stereotypically catlike—cool, reserved, isolated and extremely vain. Through its incessant prowling throughout the Land of Oz, however, the Glass Cat has acquired intimate knowledge of its complex terrain; and it is generally willing to exploit this knowledge to the benefit of Dorothy and her friends. In The Magic of Oz, for example, the Glass Cat guides the rescue party that saves Trot and Cap'n Bill from entrapment on the Magic Isle. And the Cat is virtually invulnerable to harm, a great advantage in its various adventures.
