Le Chat botté

Puss in Boots

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A miller leaves his mill to his eldest son, his donkey to the second and only his cat to the youngest, who fears he will have to eat the cat and starve. The cat asks for a sack and a pair of boots. In a warren he catches a young rabbit in his sack and presents it to the king from «Monsieur le marquis de Carabas», his master's new name; then two partridges caught in the wheat, and game for two or three months. When the king drives along the river with his daughter, the cat has his master bathe there and cries that the marquis is drowning; the king's guards pull him out, the cat says thieves took his clothes (he hid them under a stone himself), and the king gives the marquis one of his finest suits. The princess falls madly in love, and the king takes him into his coach. Running ahead, the cat threatens the mowers and the reapers: they must say the meadow and the wheat belong to the marquis de Carabas, or be chopped up like pie meat, and the king marvels at the marquis's lands. The cat reaches the castle of a rich ogre who owns all those lands, flatters him into turning into a lion (the cat flees to the gutters in his useless boots) and then into a mouse, and eats the mouse. He welcomes the king to the castle of the marquis de Carabas; in the hall a feast the ogre had made ready for his friends waits. The king offers the marquis his daughter, they marry that same day, and the cat becomes a great lord who chases mice only for fun. Two morals: skill and know-how are worth more to the young than an inheritance, and fine clothes, looks and youth help to win a heart.

Retold from Histoires ou Contes du temps passé (Claude Barbin, Paris 1697): Le Maistre Chat ou le Chat botté by Charles Perrault (public domain).