Reading Notes: Lang's European Fairy Tales Part A

Puss in Boots/The Master Cat

My favorite part of reading this story was hearing Antonio Banderas's voice in my head each time the cat spoke. It's kind of funny that the cat asks for boots. I still don't really see why he needed or wanted the boots but it definitely makes the story more interesting to picture a cat wearing boots. I saw how the bag he asked for fit the narrative but his boots don't seem to help him at all. The puss is definitely very smart and is great at tricking people into doing what he wants. He is really an intimidating character but he is also a cat. I think the inheritance scenario in which the other two brothers get a mill and a donkey help to emphasize just how little would be expected of a cat but he uses wit and terror to help his master find the king's favor and ultimately become a baron himself.  I really wish more elements of this story of Puss in Boots had some how been incorporated into the Puss in Boots film they made awhile back. 

Puss in Boots (Wikimedia Commons)

Plot:

• A man dies leaving his three sons a mill, an ass and a cat as inheritance.
• The cat convinces the youngest son that if he gives the cat a bag and a pair of boots his end of the inheritance will not seem so bad
• The cat plays dead and catches animals and presents them as favors to the king on behalf of his master
• The cat gets his master to go to the river and bathe and tells the king to help save his master from drowning
• The cat convinces the king to save his master and his master is invited into the king's coach
• The cat threatens people along their route to say his master owns the land they are on.
• The cat tricks a shape-shifting ogre into turning into a mouse and eats him so he can pass the ogre's castle off as belonging to his master
• The king sees the castle and offers the cat's master his daughter's hand in marriage.
• The cat becomes a baron

The story is part of the Lang's European Fairy Tales I unit. Story source: The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, illustrated by H. J. Ford (1889).