Once upon a very very long time ago, a woodcutter, his wife, and young daughter lived in the forest next to the village that surrounded a beautiful castle. The man was a very very good woodcutter and his wood was highly valued by all of the ladies in the village.
Each morning the woodsman would wake and load his wagon. His wife and daughter would give him a hug and a kiss and watch him walk off, calling as he always did, "I'VE GOT WOOD! I'VE GOT WOOD!" To her credit, the woodsman's wife had no problem with her husband leaving their little house each morning because she knew he always returned each night with his best wood left for her.
The men of the village either worked the fields or in the castle so only the ladies and children of the village were home when the woodsman made his rounds. The ladies always cried with happiness when they heard the woodsman approaching. The loved the strong, straight, hard wood the woodsman always had for them. In case you didn't know, wood is a strange thing, the happier and more beautiful the ladies were, the easier it was for the woodsman to give them the hard wood they so needed and loved.
Sadly the happiness of the kingdom was not to remain. The Queen, seeing the happiness of all of the ladies in the village, grew very angry because she herself was not happy. She was unhappy because she had no children. Oh how much she wanted to have a prince or princess to lavish her riches upon. Her unhappiness caused the Queen to have a very mean spirit and because of her meanness all of the castle woodsmen became unable to provide to her their good wood. This made the Queen even more mad, which made her more ugly, which made the wood being offered to her less and less hard.
When the Queen saw how happy the ladies of the village were, she grew very very angry. It didn't take long for the Queen to discover that the source of the ladies happiness was the good wood the kindly woodsman had been giving them. She called the woodsman to the castle and demanded some of his wood for herself but the woodsman had no wood to give. This made the queen furious and she had her guards put the woodsman into the castle dungeon.
With the woodsman in the dungeon, a deep sadness fell on the land. The Queen found no happiness from her actions. The ladies of the village were unhappy because they missed getting the woodsman's wood. The sadness of the ladies made their husbands and children unhappy. But no one was as unhappy as the Ella and her mother.
As it happened, there lived in the village a lady who was a witch. No one knew she was a witch, not even her son. She had no husband and she missed the woodsman terribly. When she discovered the kindly woodsman's fate she sat and thought about what to do. Late one night she decided on a plan and climbed upon her broomstick and flew to the castle. She awoke the evil Queen and told her that she had decided to curse the kingdom. The curse she put on the kingdom was this: All grown men in the kingdom would be turned into cows and all of the women would be turned into pussycats. The men and women would remain cows and pussycats until a new princess was born. The children of the kingdom would sleep until they reached their eighteenth birthday, then the boys of the kingdom would care for the cows and the girls of the kingdom would care for the pussycats. The witch waved her wand and instantly every child slept, every man in the kingdom was turned into a cow and every woman in the kingdom was turned into a pussycat. Now this was not a good plan because as soon as she waved her wand both the queen and the witch were both turned into pussycats too.
When Ella turned eighteen, she awoke. At first Ella was scared because her mother was no where to be seen, but then she was comforted by a beautiful black furred pussycat that had come to her.