Puss in Boots

When an old miller died, he left the mill to his eldest son, the donkey to the middle son, and to the youngest son only the cat. The young man sat down and said aloud that he did not know how he would live. The cat, who was sitting nearby, looked up and said, in a perfectly ordinary voice, that things were not as bad as they seemed, and that if his master would buy him a pair of boots and a small sack, he would see what he could do.

The young man had very little, but he found the boots and the sack, and the cat pulled the boots on and set off. He caught rabbits and plump partridges in the sack and carried them to the palace, and told the guards they were a gift to the King from his master, the Marquis of Carabas. There was no Marquis of Carabas. The cat had invented the name on the walk over. But the King was pleased, and the gifts kept coming, week after week.

The river

One morning the cat learned that the King would be driving along the river that day with his daughter. He told his master to go and bathe in the river at a spot he pointed out, and to leave the rest to him. While the young man was in the water, the cat hid his old clothes under a stone, and when the royal carriage came near, he ran into the road crying that robbers had thrown the Marquis of Carabas into the river.

The King, who knew the name well from all the gifts, stopped at once and sent for a fine suit of clothes. Dressed like a lord, the young man looked every bit of one, and the King invited him into the carriage. The King’s daughter, sitting across from him, thought he was the most pleasant person she had met in a long while, and the young man, who had expected nothing from that morning but a swim, could hardly speak.

The fields of Carabas

The cat, meanwhile, was running far ahead along the road. Every time he passed people working in a field or a meadow, he stopped and told them, kindly but very firmly, that when the King asked whose land this was, they should answer that it belonged to the Marquis of Carabas. So when the carriage rolled past, mile after mile, the King heard the same answer every time, and grew more impressed with every field.

At the end of the road stood a great castle that truly belonged to an ogre, a rich and bad-tempered one who could change his shape. The cat knocked and was let in, and made a great show of admiring the ogre’s power. He said he had heard the ogre could turn into a lion, but did not quite believe it. The ogre turned into a lion at once, roaring, and the cat pretended to be very impressed.

The mouse

Then the cat said, in a doubtful sort of voice, that turning into something large was one thing, but he had also heard the ogre could turn into something as small as a mouse, and that surely could not be true. Stung, the ogre shrank into a small grey mouse and ran across the floor, and the cat, who was after all a cat, took care of the rest. When the King’s carriage arrived, the cat stood in the gateway and welcomed everyone to the castle of the Marquis of Carabas.

The King was so charmed by the young man, and the lands, and the castle, that before the evening was over he had suggested the young man might like to marry his daughter, and the young man, who liked her very much by then, said yes. The cat was made a great lord and never chased another mouse unless he felt like it. And the youngest son, who had wept because all he was left was a cat, had in that one friend been left more than either of his brothers.

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Auvergne Lullaby

Play this softly while you read Puss in Boots aloud: a traditional handplayed lullaby from the Auvergne, a green upland region of castles and cattle in the heart of France.

See the lyrics & meaning →