This folktale is about a greedy cat that cheats a trusting friend. A cat and mouse decide to live together. They discover a pot of ‘fat’ (probably dripping) and hide it in a safe place so they will have something to eat over winter. Unfortunately, the cat cannot stop thinking about the pot and empties it well before time. In most folktales, something bad would happen to the cat to teach it a lesson. Not so here! When the mouse complains, the cat does what cats normally do. The moral: You can’t change the natural ways of the world.
Our source for the story was Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm, translated by British writer Margaret Hunt. The book, which was first published in 1884, contains all 200 Grimm folktales plus 10 legends. This is tale No. 2.
Original Text / PDF (976 words)
In which town was the church
An interesting question, and one that we will probably never have a definite answer to. The brothers gave the sources of their folktales in handwritten notes to the first (German) edition of Grimms’ Fairy Tales. For this story, the source was stated as Gretchen Wild from Kassel, where the brothers lived at the time. So one can only assume that the church was located somewhere in Kassel, or the wider central German state of Hesse in which Kassel is located. The brothers were very close to the Wild family, who were the source of many of their earlier stories. Wilhelm married Gretchen’s younger sister Dortchen and, when Jakob later moved in with them, she is said to have jokingly referred to the brothers as “her two husbands”.
i would like to read stories with quizzes or questions.
Thank you for taking the time to comment. Many more of our stories also have Quizzes.