The (Real) Legend of the Sleeping Cat

Once upon a time there was a child, a kid by the name of Jack. Jack had many adventures, but the most famous of his adventures began the day he found his ring. He'd left home early that morning, sent to the market so he could trade a bag of "magic" beans for a cow and spent the whole day at market, trying to find someone willing to buy his beans. But noone was interested.

Sad and hungry, he started home. Just outside town, something glinting by the side of the road caught his attention. He paused, and was amazed to discover a ring, set with a ruby that in the fading light of the sun sparkled with the color of a burning fire. He rushed home to share his discovery with his elderly mother. They might not have much to eat for a night, but on the morrow, surely all their worries were over.

"Look, mother," Jack shouted as he rushed through the front door. He thrust his hand into his pocket to pull out the ring, but his mother was quicker.

Before Jack could retrieve the ring, she asked, "Jack, dear, did you get the cow?"

"I'm sorry mother, but noone would trade with me. But look what I found on my way home!"

"Another grasshopper? Or maybe a butterfly? Or perhaps a mantis.. Jack, darling, it's lovely I'm sure, but what are we going to eat? With a cow we could have milk and cheese, we could get by."

"But mother, look, I found a ring! And it looks expensive!"

Finally, he managed to show his mother the ring, finally she began to share in his joy. As with most fairy tales, it wasn't worth trying to find the person that lost it, the ring was theirs, and Jack was going to bring it to the market the next day, hoping to trade it for a cow and maybe a chicken. So Jack, still hungry since they didn't really have much in the way of food yet, went to sleep.

But for one night, Jack's mother (notice how she's always "Jack's mother" in all fairy tales, she never gets a name), for one night she wanted to feel like a queen. So she put on the ring.

As the sun rose, Jack woke and was surprised to find his mother missing. In her bed, there instead was a cat, and on its collar it wore the ring. So Jack, having lived in the land of fairy tales all his life and knowing how magic works, Jack knew that his mother must have put on the ring. Jack knew that the ring must have been enchanted, that it transformed his mother into a cat.

"Mother! Mother, what happened to you?" he exclaimed, picking up the cat. But the cat didn't respond, just lay in his arms sleeping. Not knowing what to do, he tried to turn to his mother for advice, but no matter how much he tried to wake the cat, it continued to sleep.

Unsure of what to do, afraid for his mother, Jack began to panic. Just then someone began knocking at the door. Carrying the cat, he ran to the door and opened it to find an old woman there.

"Can you help an old woman, sonny," she asked. "My cow has run away from home, my chickens have died. My flour has bugs in it and my money was stolen. I am hungry, could you give an old woman some breakfast?"

Again, Jack knew the land of fairy tales, knew that any time an old woman comes begging at your door, she's capable of either helping or cursing. Or he was just wanting her to go on her way so he could get back to his problems. Either way, even though he was hungry himself, he handed the woman his bag of beans and wished her well.

She didn't seem to notice his hurry to get her out the door. But that doesn't mean she was oblivious, she just noticed the cat instead. "That's a pretty cat you've got there, sonny. Does it have a name?"

"Of course it has a name," an increasingly-hysterical Jack cried. "It's my mother!"

"Your mother's a cat? Where's your tail at then?"

Almost incoherently, Jack manages to tell his story, tell of the beans and the lack of a cow and the ruby ring and most of all tells of his mother, holding out the still-sleeping cat. The old lady smiles mysteriously and tells Jack of a tower on an island across the sea. She tells him about how the evil wizard, the owner of this tower fell in love with the princess of a nearby land and created an enchanted ring, a ring that would turn its wearer into a sleeping cat. How the wizard plotted to use this evil ring to capture the king and blackmail the princess into being his bride. And she told Jack how the wizard used a ship to sail to the nearby land, but while at sea a storm hit and carried the ring away.

"And so the only one that can break this curse and turn your mother back is this wizard." With that, the old woman handed Jack a pouch containing some herbs that would "take care" of the wizard. With her job done, she walked out the door and was never seen again.

So Jack journeyed to the distant isle in search of the evil wizard. But Jack knew that the wizard wouldn't just remove the curse, for the wizard was evil. And the ring was his, Jack hadn't bothered to try returning it. So instead of asking at the front door, Jack entered through the servant's entrance. Past the stables, through the pantry, into the kitchen, and that's where he saw her.

Even though the evil wizard's plot to blackmail the princess had failed, he had not given up. He entered her castle on the darkest of nights, stole her from her room, and dragged her back to his tower. His magic prevented her from leaving the island, no matter how she hated living there.

Of course, Jack thought she was the most beautiful person in the world, and would do anything to save her. So while the kitchen servants weren't watching, into the wizards food he emptied the contents of his pouch of herbs, and when the wizard ate it he fell over dead.

With the wizard dead, his spells began to fail. The princess again was able to leave the island, and asked Jack to come with her back to her kingdom. Jack would, of course, have been stupid to refuse. So he and the princess returned to her land, married, and lived happily ever after.

The cat, sadly, did not turn into Jack's mother. Either the wizards magic remained in the ring, or his mother hadn't turned into a cat in the first place. Either way, the cat did wake from its (exceptionally long) cat nap, and was well fed for the rest of its days. The princess thought Jack a bit daft for talking to a cat as if it were his mother, but figured noone's perfect.