Puss in Boots: The Bedtime Story Retold
Quick answer: Puss in Boots retold for bedtime: a miller's son inherits only a cat, and the cat, with boots and a bag, makes him the Marquis of Carabas. Perrault's 1697 tale, read aloud.
A miller leaves the mill to one son, the donkey to another, and the cat to the third, who thinks he has been given nothing. The cat asks for boots and a bag, and within a week he is talking to the king. Perrault's tale is the great story of a servant far cleverer than his master.
The story
A miller left his three sons the mill, the donkey and the cat. The youngest, who got the cat, sat down miserably. “Once I have eaten my cat and made a muff of his skin, I shall starve.” The cat, who had heard, said, “Do not fret, master. Give me a bag and a pair of boots for the brambles, and you will find you are not so badly off.”
Booted, the cat filled his bag with bran and lettuce, lay as if dead in a warren, and caught a rabbit. He carried it to the palace. “Sire, my master the Marquis of Carabas sends you this rabbit.” Next time it was two partridges, and so on for months, until the king knew the Marquis of Carabas well without having seen him.
One day the king was to drive along the river with his daughter. “Master, bathe in the river where I show you, and leave the rest to me.” As the coach passed, the cat cried that the Marquis of Carabas was drowning and that thieves had taken his clothes; in truth he had hidden them under a stone. The king sent a suit from his own wardrobe, and the miller's son looked so well in it that the princess fell in love at once.
The cat ran ahead. He told the reapers to say the fields belonged to the Marquis of Carabas, or they would be chopped as fine as mincemeat, and the frightened reapers did. At last he came to the castle of the ogre who owned the land, an ogre who could turn into anything. “A lion?” said the cat, and leapt onto the roof in fright when he did. “But a mouse, surely, is impossible.” The ogre became a mouse, and the cat ate him. When the coach arrived, the cat bowed at the gate: “Welcome to the house of the Marquis of Carabas.” The king gave him his daughter that day, and the cat became a great lord, chasing mice only for fun.
Where it comes from
Charles Perrault published Le Chat Botté in Paris in 1697. Older Italian versions exist, in Straparola and Basile, but Perrault gave the cat his boots and his marquis.
What the tale is about underneath
The miller's son does nothing except bathe and look good in borrowed clothes. Every idea belongs to the cat, whose gift is not magic but nerve: he invents a title, repeats it until the king believes it, then makes it true by taking a castle. The tale is about how a reputation is built, one small gift at a time, by someone never in the room when the credit is given.
Reading aloud
Give the cat a brisk, confident voice and the master a helpless one.
Write your own
Borrow the servant who does everything. Give your story a passive hero and a helper who is not, and let the reader's loyalty shift to the one with the ideas. Then borrow the lie that becomes true: a claim repeated until the world arranges itself to fit. It works in any era with a king in it, and in most without.
What writers can take from this
- Let the master's despair be brief and a little funny; the muff line does the work.
- Show the first trap in detail, then summarise the months of gifts in a sentence.
- Have the cat give the drowning cry with real drama.
- Do the ogre's changes fast: lion, roof, mouse, gone.
- End on the cat as a lord chasing mice for fun; it is Perrault's own last joke.
Try it yourself
Write a story in which a character inherits what everyone agrees is the worthless share and discovers it has a plan. Let the helper build a reputation for the hero through small repeated acts, and let the final move make the invented name true.
Questions
What is the moral of Puss in Boots?
Perrault attached two verses: that wit and industry can be worth more than an inheritance, and that fine clothes and a young face go a long way with princesses. Read plainly, the tale says that a clever servant can make a master, and it enjoys the cheek of that.
Is Puss in Boots suitable for a 4-year-old?
Yes. The one alarming moment, the ogre becoming a lion, is over quickly and ends with a mouse, which children find funny. The cat's threat to the reapers can be softened to a stern warning.
Where does Puss in Boots come from?
Charles Perrault published it in 1697 in his collection of tales, in Paris. Earlier versions of a cat who makes his master's fortune appear in the Italian collections of Straparola and Basile, but the boots and the Marquis of Carabas are Perrault's.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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