Fedro: Le Storie del Gatto

Abstract

Here is a very large pamphlet of sixteen pages remarkable for its slick bright illustrations. Included are two traditional cat stories and two into which cats are brought who were not involved in Phaedrus' version. The two traditional stories are The Cat, the Eagle, and the Sow and The Cats Carrying a Rooster on a Litter. The two further stories are The Mother Cat and Her Young and The Tortoise Who Wanted to Fly. The cat enters the third story as the pleading mother who needs a place to have her young. Usually, as in Phaedrus, a dog asks a dog for her home; here a cat asks a dog. The cat enters the fourth story as a friend of the tortoise. The story ends with the cat weeping big tears over her dead friend. Not only is there no cat in any version of this fable that I know, but also Phaedrus does not even have this fable about the tortoise and the eagle! The cat on the cover is a hippie girl with a short skirt dancing to a rock band of mice. And do not miss the baby boar at the base of the tree in the first story shooting a missile at his sibling's leaf boat. The illustrations for this last story have a strong Swiss or German character. The eagle dresses like a Swiss or Bavarian, and mice in German or Swiss clothing offer the cat a glass of wine as the cat weeps. This pamphlet is in a series, from which I have four other volumes. Like them, it has simple questions on the inside of the back cover. The back cover itself lists the fifty books in the series.