La Chatte blanche

The White Cat

An old king, afraid his three sons want his crown, sends them off for a year: whoever brings back the most beautiful little dog will be his heir. The youngest prince, lost in a stormy forest, finds a castle of gold and porcelain where only hands serve him and a court of cats is ruled by a little White Cat in a black veil. He spends a happy year with her; she gives him an acorn holding a tiny dancing dog, which wins the contest, but the king sets a second task: a cloth fine enough to pass through the eye of a needle. White Cat gives him a walnut; inside a hazelnut, a cherry stone, a kernel, a grain of wheat and a grain of millet he finds a painted cloth four hundred ells long, which passes through the needle six times. The king sets a third task: the most beautiful girl. In the third year White Cat asks the prince to cut off her head and tail; she becomes a beautiful queen and her cats become lords and ladies. She tells her story: her mother promised her, before her birth, to three fairies for the fruits of their garden; the fairies raised her in a tower with no door, with a talking parrot and a little dog; she secretly married a young king who climbed to her by a rope ladder; the fairies, who wanted her to marry the dwarf king Migonnet, set their dragon on him, which devoured him, and turned her into a white cat until a prince who looked exactly like her husband should come. The prince brings her to his father hidden in a crystal rock; she steps out, the king declares she deserves his crown, and she gives a kingdom to the king and to each of his sons, asking only for the youngest prince as her husband.

Retold from Les contes choisis (Belin-Leprieur et Morizot, Paris 1847): La Chatte blanche by Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy (public domain).