Ethiopian Folktales

Narrated by Merga Debelo

Long, long ago the cats and mice used to live together in harmony. They were friends. But then the mice realised something mysterious was happening. The mice started disappearing. So they started to investigate the case. And they realised that the cats were eating the mice, so that they realised that they had to hide. So they began digging holes and hiding in them, and mothers always warned the young mice not to go out anywhere near the cats. So, after a time, the cats had no mice to eat.

So they got together and said, “Look, there are no mice to eat anymore, so how can we catch them and eat them?”

So they came up with a plan and the plan was to ask to marry a mouse, and to eat all of the mice on the day of the wedding.

So they sent their elders to the elders of the mice to say that they wanted their son to marry their daughter.

But the mice were a bit suspicious and they said, “No, no, no, we’re not interested in the marriage, you’re not serious, you’ll eat us up.”

The cats said, “No, no, forgive us for our past, we’re serious now. We just want the marriage.”

So on the day of the marriage, the mice were still wary and they warned their children to be careful when the cats came because there might be a problem. So the cats were coming from afar singing a wedding song.

As they came nearer, the words of the wedding song had changed to: “Surround them and gobble them up, surround them and gobble them up.”

And the mice were singing, “Sing, but keep an eye on the cats, sing, but keep an eye on the cats.”

So when the mice heard the cats were singing, “Gobble them up,” all the mice jumped into their holes singing, “But keep an eye on them,” so they escaped.

And another day the elders of the cats came back to the mice, saying, “Look, we came to the wedding, but no one showed up.”

And the mice said, “Yes, but we’ve also grown wise, and we’ve also got our exits.”

And the moral of the story is you should be careful to have means of escaping if trouble comes.