Cat and Cook
A little fable about a cat, a chicken and some wasted words.
1812
Introduction
Russian fabulist Ivan Andreyevich Krylov published his first collection of tales in 1809. More fables followed, and he became something of a celebrity, who was friendly with Emperor Nicholas I. Krylov was one of a handful of literary figures honoured with a place on the Millennium of Russia monument in Veliky Novgorod, unveiled in 1862.
A Cook, whose learning passed for great,
His kitchen left one evening late,
Intent (he was a man of godly life)
On pot-house ale in memory of his wife,
Who died that day a year before;
And, as he had of eatables a store,
To keep them safe from mouse or rat
He placed on guard a favourite Cat.
What’s this he sees on his return? The floor
All strewn with pie-crust, Tommy* on the stretch
Behind a cask, a chicken in his jaws,
And purring softly as a bone he gnaws.
“Ah, glutton! Ah, thou nasty wretch!
The Cook’s tongue for abuse was much respected:
“Is’t not a shame in thee to desecrate these walls?
(Tommy the while a nice tit-bit inspected)
What thou, that everyone a nice Cat calls,
A model for all mildness past belief,—
O thou — fie, blush for thy disgrace!
The neighbours all shall cry out to thy face:
‘Tomcat’s a rogue! Tomcat’s a thief!
Nor yard nor kitchen now shall Tommy see;
From hungry wolves the sheep-fold should be free:
The scandal he, the pest, the eyesore of our streets!
(Tom listens, yes; but — still he eats!)
Our orator, once set on morals preaching,
Could find no end unto his flow of teaching.
What then? while he his own words followed,
Tommy the last piece of the roast had swallowed.
And I would teach our Cook, the dunce,
By letters in the wall cut big:
To waste no time in talking like a prig,
But force employ at once.
From ‘Kriloff’s Original Fables’ (1883), translated by John Henry* Harrison (1829-1900).
* The translator of this fable, John Henry Harrison (1829-1900), an English teacher living in St Petersburg, wrote of it: “This fable seems to have been called forth by the observations of Kriloff at the English Club. One of the members was accustomed to boast of what he had seen on his travels, and once, when he declared the size of a stirlet [or sterlet, a kind of sturgeon] in the Volga to equal the length of the room in which the company were assembled, Kriloff rose from his chair near the door, saying, ‘Allow me to make room for your stirlet’.” See also Traveller’s Check.
* In the original poem, Krylov gave the cat’s name as Vaska, a diminutive of Vasily (Basil).