Cat and Mouse in Partnership

A cat talked so warmly of love and friendship that a mouse agreed they should keep house together. “We must store food for winter,” said the cat, “or we will starve—and you cannot roam far without risking a trap.” They bought a pot of fat and wondered where to hide it. After much talk the cat proposed the church, under the altar, where no one dared steal holy things. They carried the pot there in secret and vowed not to touch it until need was truly hard.

Before long the cat longed for a taste. She told the mouse her cousin had a spotted kitten and had asked her to stand godmother at the christening. The mouse urged her to go and to remember a drop of sweet wine. It was all a lie. The cat went straight to the church, licked the top off the fat, sunned herself on the roofs, and came home at evening. Asked the child’s name, she said coolly, “Top-off.” The mouse thought it an odd name; the cat shrugged that it was no worse than Crumb-stealer among mouse godchildren.

Soon the craving returned. She claimed another godmother invitation for a kitten with a white ring round its neck. The mouse agreed again. Behind the town walls the cat ate half the pot. “Nothing tastes so good as what one keeps to oneself,” she thought. At home she reported the name “Half-done.” The mouse had never heard it and doubted it stood in any calendar.

“All good things go in threes,” said the cat next, inventing a third black kitten with white paws. The mouse muttered over Top-off and Half-done; the cat told her dark-furred fancies came from staying indoors. While the mouse cleaned house, the cat emptied the pot completely. “When everything is eaten, one has peace,” she said, and waddled home late. The third name, she admitted, would please no better: “All-gone.” The mouse shook her head, curled up, and slept, deeply suspicious.

From that day on, no more godmother calls came to the cat. When winter emptied the outside world of scraps, the hungry mouse proposed they fetch their carefully stored pot of fat. “Yes,” said the cat, “you will enjoy it as much as sticking your tongue out the window.” At the church the pot stood in place—empty. “Now I see,” cried the mouse. “A fine friend! You ate it all while you stood godmother—first top off, then half-done, then—” “Hold your tongue,” snarled the cat, “one word more and I eat you too.” “All-gone” was already on the mouse’s lips; scarcely spoken, the cat sprang, seized her, and swallowed her down. That, the tale says, is the way of the world.

About this story

“Cat and Mouse in Partnership” is number 2 in Margaret Hunt’s translation of the Grimms (in German, “Katze und Maus in Gesellschaft”). This page follows the English of Project Gutenberg’s Grimms’ Fairy Tales (#2591), which is based on the translations of Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes.

The cat’s three invented godchildren, “Top-off,” “Half-done” and “All-gone,” are the joke the whole tale hangs on. The ending, where the cat swallows the mouse, is not softened, and the source closes with the dry remark that this is the way of the world.

Read the original: Grimms’ Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg #2591)

Best for ages 9–12 with an adult — the cat deceives, threatens and eats her trusting partner; there is no rescue.

Reading the story closely

The invented names tell readers the truth while hiding it inside the cat’s lie. The mouse notices that the names are strange, but the cat dismisses the questions. When the empty pot finally makes the pattern clear, the cat uses violence to prevent the mouse from naming the theft.

Put Top-off, Half-done and All-gone beside drawings of the pot at each stage. Compare what readers know with what the mouse knows then. The closing claim about “the way of the world” is a bitter narrator’s comment that readers can challenge; it does not make exploitation inevitable or the victim responsible for another’s betrayal.

Think about it

• What do the invented names reveal to readers before the mouse sees the empty pot?
• Why do you think the mouse trusted the cat in the first place?
• The tale says this “is the way of the world.” Do you agree? What would you tell the mouse?

Related stories

• The Crow and the Fox — a fable about a sweet-talker who tricks a trusting bird out of her food
• The Cat’s Judgement — an Indian fable where a cat pretends to be holy, then eats its trusting victims
• The Ant and the Grasshopper — a fable about saving food for winter and conflicting views of work and sharing