The White Cat: a Love Story

One sunny spring morning, a merchant asked his son and daughter to go off into the woods and pick some flowers for their mother's birthday. They went separate ways, the brother staying along the path while the daughter wandered to a beautiful meadow she had seen through the trees. While she was picking wildflowers there, the girl thought she heard the bushes rustle behind her. But when she looked, no one was there. Thinking nothing of it, she continued to pick flowers.

Later that morning, the merchant's son returned home. His sister was nowhere in sight. The merchant and son searched the woods but could not find her anywhere. On their way home, they were discussing what to do and whether they should tell the mother when who should be standing in the doorway but the girl herself.

"Where were you?" her father demanded.

"Picking flowers for Mother," she replied.

"You had us worried! Never do that again!" he told her.

She told him she was sorry and that she would not frighten him like that again.

Over time, the merchant's son noticed that his sister was acting quite odd. He asked her one day why she was acting so strange.

“I’m acting the way I normally act,” she told him. “You clearly don’t know your own sister.”

 He apologized for upsetting her, holding out his arms in an attempt to comfort her. She hugged him back, and when they pulled out of their embrace, he locked hands with her and glanced under her left arm for the strange birthmark his sister bore: a single golden hair. There was no such hair on this girl. The merchant’s son knew this could not be his sister.

That very afternoon, he asked his father and mother for leave to go off and see the world, not telling them his theory so as not to alarm them. They granted his request, and he rode off into the country to seek his sister.

Meanwhile, far away, a white cat prowled anxiously around in an enchanted tower, looking for a new escape. The fairies of the surrounding enchanted wood had tried explaining how she was part of a prophecy in which humans and fairies were to be united. The fairies did not know exactly what the prophecy entailed, but they knew she was the one to fulfill it. However much they begged her to understand, she refused, hissing and clawing at any of them that came too close.

She had even tried to escape, before they turned her into a cat. She had woven a ladder from the yarn they had given her to occupy herself in her confinement. But the fairies, quickly discovering her plot on one of their daily visits, found the ladder stuffed in her mattress. They then turned her into a cat and undid her work so that all she could do was paw at it. The white cat spent her days playing with the string or licking herself, always taking longer to run her rough tongue over the golden hair under her left foreleg.  

She was homesick, constantly reminded of her family by the half-full basket of flowers, now dried up, that lay on the table in the center of the tower room. She passed time perched on the windowsill, watching robins and blue jays fly by, singing joyful tunes. Sometimes she just wanted to jump from the tower.

I wish they had turned me into a bird so that I might fly home, she thought to herself. The fairies are much smarter than that, though. Otherwise I wouldn’t be stuck in here while my family enjoys that imposter’s company.

Not many days passed before her loneliness came to an end.

It was a day like any other if you’re a cat trapped in a tower: sunny, with birds chirping and everything happy and free while she was miserable and lonely. The white cat was staring hopelessly out of the window when all of a sudden, a man appear from the trees, riding towards her imprisoning tower on a white stallion. When he was close enough, she mewed as loudly and forlornly as she could. He looked up and noticed her pacing the length of the window, unable to get down.

“You poor thing!” the man exclaimed. He dismounted and rummaged in his hunting bag for some rope, tied a large loop at one end, and flung it up towards the window latch in the hope that it would not only catch but that it could support his weight. As if by magic, it only took one try and he was up and in the tower in less time than it took to find it.

The man stayed with her in that lonely tower, tossing the ball of yarn so she could chase it and stroking her soft fur. He was so captivated by the sweet demeanor of the cat that he continued to visit the tower every day. He would have taken her, but he didn’t know who owned the cat, and he was not the kind of person to take something that did not belong to him.

She didn’t speak at first, for fear of frightening him away and never seeing him again. But one day, they were both so comfortable with each other that she started talking to him. At first he was shocked, but he cared too much about her to mind this magical quality. He listened as she explained her situation to him, how she had been kidnapped by the fairies and left in the tower. The only thing she didn’t tell him was about the prophecy.

He stroked her fur to comfort her. She purred. When he left that day, he lay awake that entire night thinking of any means to save the white cat from this horrible treatment.

The next day, he went to visit her again and tried to bring her out of the window with him. But the fairies had put a spell on the tower preventing her from leaving while she was in the form of a cat. The spell had to be broken before she could leave the tower.

So the man continued to visit her. Eventually he realized that he had fallen in love with her and did not want to leave her. She pleaded with him, knowing that he had duties he must attend to. He consented, but before he left, he asked her for a kiss. “I know you’re a cat, but you are the sweetest being I have ever met, and I love you.”

“I love you as well,” she said, and moved closer so that he may kiss her. And when he did, she transformed back into a maiden before his eyes! The tower started shrinking, the walls around them falling away, until they were standing on the ground, her hands in his, with a pile of stones lying next to them. He knelt down on one knee and asked her to marry him, and she could only nod and cry.

At this time, the merchant’s son happened to ride up to that very spot. “Sister!” he exclaimed, dismounting and running up to her.

“Brother!” she said, doing the same. And so it was settled. He brought his sister and her fiancé back home where the imposter, seeing the spell broken, disappeared altogether. Everything was explained and the wedding date was set.

When the wedding came, even the fairies showed up to bless the happy couple. It was discovered that the handsome young man was part fairy, so that the union between him the merchant’s daughter did indeed fulfill the prophecy.