Mouse, Cat, Jar of Fat

This weekend, I started another Grimm’s fairytale illustration in the same Moleskine notebook as the Frog Prince, this time a story that’s more obscure. You can dress it up with lots of embellishments, but essentially The Companionship of the Cat and the Mouse goes like this:

A Cat convinces a Mouse to set up a household as a partner alongside him, and to buy with him a little jar of fat to store away for the winter. The Cat suggests hiding it under the church alter, where they agree is the safest place to keep it. The Cat sneaks back to church three times, making excuses that he’s been invited to attend the Christening of some godchildren, but really he eats the fat. She is suspicious, but eventually takes the Cat’s word. Finally, in the lean of winter, the Mouse asks to go for the fat they had put aside for emergencies, and the Cat replies ominously that she might as well taste the breeze. Indeed, she finds the jar empty and, enraged, she raises her voice to the Cat. The Cat warns her not to speak against him, but the words are already out of her mouth, and she accuses the cat of eating what was meant to keep her safe from traps. The angry Cat pounces and eats her up. “You see, that’s the way of the world,” ends this old German folk tale.

I love some of the more obscure Grimm stories like this one because they expose fairy tales for what they really are – parable. I’m so glad to live in a place and time where on the surface, all that this tale represents is the danger of base, brutal human nature. Today, this story might simply read as being about the dangers of trust – warning about devilish individuals lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce and dispossess the weak. However, given a past where women were regarded as little more than chattel, this tale is really more of a terse, brutal indictment on the power of women in society. The tone is fatalistic, but so were the lives of women of that culture.

I had meant for this to be a short and sweet post, but I can’t (absolutely can not) keep myself from nerding out a little over myth/literature stuff. There are loads of other things that I’m working on, so I feel like I need to go ahead and plug away at those for a while. Updates on all of that stuff soon!