I must say, I was skeptical as soon as I read the title. A cat and mouse in partnership? Is this going to be a story of two purported enemies coming together and growing to become friends? It turns out that it was nothing of the sort. The fable is very short and goes as follows:

A cat and a mouse are roommates. They seem to be getting along fine, but winter is coming and they are low on food. Luckily, though, they come across some butter. This may sound trivial, but lipids are the most calorie-rich molecules in our diet, and our body fat allows for both energy storage and thermal insulation. It all has to do with the structure of carbon and how it binds other atoms. Each carbon has four potential binding partners and for every carbon bond a large amount of energy can be stored and liberated… I’m sorry, perhaps I’m getting carried away with the science. Let’s get back to the butter.

To resist the temptation of eating all the butter before winter arrives, the cat and the mouse decide to store it elsewhere, and end up choosing the nearby cathedral. After all, who would dare to steal from the church? They promise to stick to their low-fat diet until winter, and return to their home. Unfortunately, it turns out that a pinky swear isn’t the solid contract you’d think it was, because the cat keeps sneaking away to the church to eat some of the butter. Somehow, the best excuse she can muster for her frequent absence is that she has been asked to be godmother to some of her relatives. This sounds suspicious to me. Then again, some cats have an absurd amount of kittens in each litter, which would account for all the baptisms. Regardless, the mouse totally buys this excuse and never bothers to verify the claim. Winter has now come, and it’s time to break out the butter. Both of them need the fat to make it through the hard times to come. But, lo and behold, the butter is all gone. The mouse puts two and two together, realizing that the cat is responsible, and confronts her. Then the cat eats the mouse. The end.

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Yup, that’s the story. Needless to say, the unexpected twist ending caught me by surprise. I thought, and had hoped, that there would be some kind of retribution, but without any additional information, we must assume that the cat got away with the crime. This hardly seems fair. So, what can we learn from this story, then? The first interesting thing to note is the butter itself. Although fat, especially butter, has become demonized in recent times as unhealthy or unethical, it was an essential energy source to countless people throughout history. After all, it’s easy to store and distribute, lasts for a long time without spoiling, and tastes pretty darn good. I suppose the amount of butter we consume these days might be approaching “too much of a good thing”, but as much as I love avocados, I doubt that we will ever be completely weaned off of animal fats. At least not in the near future.

But, at the end of the day, this story isn’t about butter. It’s about blind faith. The mouse had misplaced its faith in both the cat and the church. So, perhaps the moral of this story is: don’t trust your enemies, and don’t trust religion. Or simply put, don’t trust your enemies. However, the Grimm brothers conclude the story with the following sentence: “Verily, that is the way of the world”, which in plain English translates into: shit happens. Maybe that’s the true message of the story. Regardless, the next time you’re forced to share food with someone in a survival situation, rather than postponing the inevitable, just kill them immediately and keep everything to yourself.