It’s All That Cat’s Fault

Mariapaola Pesce & Lorenzo Carlacchiani

Three brothers, poor as church mice, are at their dead father’s bedside. There is little to inherit: the family shop goes to the older brother, a hay cart to the middle child, and the youngest gets just a cat. But not just any cat! A talking cat that makes a pact with his new master: in exchange for a pair of boots and a hat the cat will make his master a rich man.

A scam is soon organized. The cat persuades the master to remove his clothes and enter the lake, just as the car of the local boss’ henchmen is driving by. The cat asks for their help, pretending that his penniless master is in fact the Marquis de Carabas, a French nobleman visiting the city, who is about to drown in the lake in his underwear.

The young man is saved by the gangsters and invited by the boss himself to a party with the purpose of getting him, a marquis, to marry his daughter. The final, however, takes an unexpected turn. The young man marries the boss’ daughter too hastily, ending up in a family of gangsters with a wife he doesn’t fancy.

Mariapaola Pesca has written a crackling modern version of Charles Perrault’s fairy tale Puss in Boots, set in Chicago in the 1920’s.