Pilgrim Cat and the Wary Old Rat

Overview

A cat announces its departure on pilgrimage to the rats. When it returns, their leader visits to offer congratulations. The old rat notices the cat moving its lips and whiskers. The cat asks him to perform before it and offers a hundred réaux as payment. The rat acknowledges the considerable sum but refuses because he fears the cat and sees no safe place between them. The invitation therefore remains a rejected offer; the printed story does not show a rat accepting it or being eaten.

The leader returns to his relatives and describes the cat’s large turban and continual muttering. He tells those without holes to dig long underground passages and concludes that flight is their protection against what he has seen. Clothing and pilgrimage give the predator a changed public appearance, while the old rat still attends to its mouth and their vulnerable proximity. The complete short tale ends with this warning. Basset supplies a separate medieval comparison in his notes, but its other mice and incidents are not inserted into the Oued Righ narrative.

Origins & earliest records

Basset (1897), no. 67, Le chat et le vieux rat, complete p. 11, headed Oued Righ. Source note 131, p. 254, points to the earlier Étude sur la Zénatia du Mzab, pp. 183–184; no individual contributor is named there. The volume’s preface identifies the Oued Righ collection context as 1885.

Records & interpretation

Original page 50, printed p. 11, read in full through the warning to the cousins. Source and comparative notes 131–132 read on page 293, printed p. 254; the whole cited Nicole Bozon tale was not newly read.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

1. 01

   Nouveaux contes berbères

   René Basset, translator and editor; individual contributor unresolved · 1897

   No. 67, complete p. 11; notes 131–132, p. 254.

Family & connections

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References

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1. Primary collected translation; original facsimiles inspectedOriginal animal tales and source notesResearch access: 2026-10-05

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