Nikhil Khasnabish

In a rich farmer’s house lived a rat with his family. When the rat and his family started eating food grains in the granary by cutting holes into its thatched bamboo wall, the farmer’s wife advised her husband to bring a cat into the house.

A cat was brought.

They fed the cat fried fish and milk and inspired her to roam the surroundings of the granary. After sensing the presence, though the rat and his wife remained away from near the granary, the cat, fond of rat meat, ate some of the mice, who were not aware of the cat’s ferocious greed. Since then, the rat and his wife, began to collect food in the night from inside the farmer’s house: food leftovers, breadcrumbs, dried fish in plastic canisters, rice in sacks, vegetables, fruits, and such edible things. That was a new menace. Because the cat was not allowed to remain inside the house, the farmer bought a mousetrap and set it in the kitchen. When a mouse became a victim, the rat husband and wife warned their children not to enter the house, since they were not as experienced as needed to identify a mousetrap. From that time on the rats and the mice started living in their hole.

It was not that they were safe in their hole too. There was danger from snakes. There was danger from owls, who often preyed on them.

In such a way, the rat couple struggled to live their life, since they were born weak and destined to live such a hazardous life.

One day when the rat was going past the lemon tree in the orchard, he saw the cat and tried to scurry away.

But the cat called out to him, ‘Hello, Rat Bro, where are you coming from? Don’t be afraid of me. Now I’ve become a kind-hearted cat. You may call me Cat Sis.’

The rat looked back, going to a safe distance. ‘How can trust you with my safety? Try to recall the number of our children in your stomach.’

‘Please don’t shame me by remembering my cruelty to me.’

Cat Sis started weeping.

When she didn’t stop weeping, Rat Bro neared her – still he maintained safe distance. ‘You seem to be in some trouble. Can you share it with me?’

Now Cat Sis told him that she was unable to move because the farmer’s cruel wife threw a hatchet on her front legs, out of anger, for secretly drinking milk from a saucepan.

Rat Bro, who was a sufferer from her cruelty, went near and saw Cat Sis’s broken forelegs: a surge of sympathy flew through his heart and he wanted to know what she desired him to do. She then told him to help her with food she was unable to collect.

Rat Bro stole fish and other food items from the farmer’s house and other places, and when he failed to collect such food items, he even collected fish bones from the garbage.

Time passed.

Cat Sis recovered.

Then one day, as Rat Bro was going past, Cat Sis asked him to wait while licking her lips.

‘Why are you licking your lips so greedily, Cat Sis?’

‘You’ve become fat and healthy. I want to embrace you into my bosom.’

‘Why do you want to embrace me Cat Sis?’

‘Because I love you. You helped me in my bad days. And you’re my Rat Bro as well.’

As Rat Bro remained standing in a thoughtful mood, Cat Sis suddenly pounced on him like pouncing on her prey, and it was by dint of his good luck that farmer’s wife threw the hatchet at Cat Sis precisely the instant Cat Sis pounced.

Unless Cat Sis broke into a run and jumped over the fence to disappear into their neighbour’s orchard, her hind legs would have broken.

Rat Bro, sitting behind the lemon tree watched the scene and silently thanked the farmer’s wife, who saved his life at present.

He heard a voice whisper into his ear, ‘Habit never changes.’