Literature

The Cats and Monkey

The Cats and Monkey

There lived two cats in a house. One day they together stole a piece of cake from the house of their master. Instantly they had a quarrel over their share. They could not decide to divide the cake between themselves. They exchanged a lot of hot words. They were about to fight each other. At last, they decided to go to a monkey for a proper division of bread. They asked the monkey to make two equal divisions of the cake.

The monkey was very clever. He assured them that he would divide the cake equally between them. The monkey broke the cake into two pieces. Then he began to weigh the pieces in a balance. One piece would grow a bit larger than the other. He bit off a portion from the larger piece and it now became smaller than the other piece. He shook his head and said, “Oho! One is bigger. One is smaller”. He had a bit of the bigger and now said “Oho! This has become smaller now”. He ate from the other.

Thus each time he put the unequal portions on the balance and bit a portion of it to make them equal. Thus he tactfully ate up the entire cake. The cats could realize their foolishness and felt sorry for losing their cake. The cats indeed left the place becoming sadder and wiser.

Moral of the story: ‘The fools fall prey to the cunning one.’