1. The Boy Who Drew Cats
A Japanese Fairytale

2. A long time ago, in a little Japanese village, there lived a poor
farmer, with his wife and family. The oldest son was strong and
healthy and helped the farmer in the fields every day planting
and harvesting the rice. The two daughters worked with their
mother in the house and the garden. They had been able to
work hard from the time they were very little . But the youngest
son, although he was extremely clever, was also quite small
and frail. He could not work in the rice fields with his father and
brother.

3. One day the boy's parents began to discuss his future, since he was
not suited to being a farmer. His mother said, "our younger son is very
clever. Perhaps we should apprentice him to the priest in the village
temple. The priest is getting old and it may be that our son will make a
good priest and will make a suitable helper for the old one." The father
agreed that their son's cleverness might make him a suitable
candidate for the temple. So the boy's parents went to the village
temple to ask the priest to take their son as an acolyte.

4. When the boy and his parents arrived at the temple, the priest asked the boy
several intricate questions. The priest was astonished at the boy's keen
understanding and the imaginative answers which he gave. Then the old priest
agreed to take the boy as an acolyte, with the understanding that the boy would
obey him in everything. The boy tried very hard to obey and he learned many
things, but he had one failing. When he should have been studying his lessons on
his own, the boy drew cats instead. He could not help himself, for he was an artist
at heart. He drew big cats and small cats, fat cats and thin cats, tall cats and short
cats, sweet cats and ferocious cats. He drew cats on his lessons, he drew cats on
the floor, he drew cats on the walls and, worst of all, he drew cats on the
big, white, rice paper screens in the temple itself.

5. The old priest was angry at first, and told the boy that drawing cats when he
should be studying was wrong. But then the priest became sadder and sadder,
because the boy continued to draw cats when he should have been working
on his lessons. Soon the priest told the boy that he must pack his belongings
and go home, for an acolyte must obey the priest in all things. The priest said
his good-byes and gave the boy one piece of advice. He said, "Avoid large
places at night, keep to small." Then the priest went into his room and closed
the door. The boy did not understand what the priest meant, but he was afraid
to knock on the door to ask for an explanation. He packed his few belongings
into a bundle and walked down to the main road.

6. When the little boy reached the road, he thought, "If I go home, my
parents will be angry and will punish me. Maybe I should go to the big
city and see if the priests in the temple there could use a new
apprentice." He turned away from his home and headed for the city. No
one had told the boy that the grand temple in the city had been closed.
The boy took his time and enjoyed the walk to the city, looking at the
fields and birds and butterflies.

7. It was dark when the boy arrived at the city gates, and everyone
was in bed asleep. There was no one to tell him that an evil goblin
had taken over the temple and chased all the priests and acolytes
away. There was no one to tell him that many soldiers had tried to
rid the temple of the goblin rat, but had failed. Boldly, he walked up
to the temple door and knocked on it. Because there was no
answer, he knocked several more times. When there still was no
answer, he turned the handle and pushed on the door. It swung
wide open, and the boy walked in calling, "is anyone here?" No
one answered him, but he thought that a priest would come by
eventually. The boy saw that there was a little room near the door,
so he went in and sat down to wait.

8. Now the goblin always left a light burning in the temple in order to lure
strangers in at night. But the little boy had never heard this, so he just
waited and inspected the room he was in. It was very dusty and dirty, and
he thought that the priests really needed an acolyte to keep it neat and
clean. While he was looking around, he opened the drawer in a table and
found some rice paper, pens and ink. Soon he was filling the paper with
drawings of cats. When he ran out of paper, he drew cats on the floor. And
then he just couldn't help himself. He had to draw cats on the white, paper
screens in the temple. He drew and drew until they were covered with
cats.

9. When he had filled the screens with pictures of every kind of cat he could
imagine, the little boy was very tired. He started to lie down next to one of
the screens. But just then the words of the old priest ran through his mind.
"Avoid large places, keep to small." The temple was enormous, so the boy
looked around for a small place. He found a tiny cupboard in the little room
near the door and climbed into it with his parcel of clothes. He shut the
cabinet door and was soon fast asleep on a shelf, with his bundle for a
pillow. In the middle of the night, the boy heard a loud noise like fighting. It
sounded like yowling and running and thumping and bumping and growling.
He peeked out of his cubbyhole, but it was too dark. He couldn't see
anything and he was so frightened that he just closed the cabinet door and
stayed inside.

10. In the morning the boy opened the cupboard and crawled out. He
tiptoed out of the little room and peeked into the temple. What a
surprise! The immense, evil goblin was dead, lying on the temple floor.
Who could have killed him? Then the little boy looked at the temple
screens. Each cat that he had drawn had a little circle of red around its
mouth. Then the boy knew that his cats had attacked and killed the
goblin. And he now understood what the priest meant when he
said, "Avoid large places, keep to small."

11. When the people of the city discovered that the goblin had been
defeated, they proclaimed the boy a hero. The soldiers went into the temple
to drag the dead goblin away. The priests of that temple would have been
happy to take him as an acolyte, but the little boy had changed his mind. He
did not become an acolyte or a priest. He became an artist instead, and his
paintings of cats were famous in all of Japan. Perhaps the next time you go
there, you will see one of his beautiful cats.