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The field mouse and the palace mouse

In a beautiful palace in Campobasso in Italy there lived a mouse. He wasn't interested in salons and botanic gardens. He was interested in the kitchen. In the kitchen there were smokes, smells and breadcrumbs. And cheese on the table! And the cook in the henhouse!

The mouse climbed up the leg of the table not realising that on top of the cupboard there was ... another cheese? No, on top of the cupboard there was a resident who wasn't interested in sitting rooms or the botanic garden either, one that also loved the kitchen. Yes, on top of the table, cheese; on top of the cupboard, a cat!

The cat jumped on to the table. The mouse scuttled down the leg of the table and escaped to the garden through the grating at the bottom of the kitchen door. He ran and ran until he came to the home of the field mouse, which didn't have either salons or botanic gardens — it was just a hole in the ground. He waited there until the shock had passed. He forgot about the cat but not the palace kitchen; there were so many smells there, so many breadcrumbs.

Then one fine day the palace mouse said to the field mouse,

“Friend, would you like to know my uncle's palace?”

“Of course I'd like to see it!” (Why wouldn't a mouse who lives in a hole in the middle of a field not want to visit a palace?).

And the two mice went off to visit the palace where the cat lived. They climbed up on to the windowsill ... there was a leg of ham on the table! The field mouse didn't know what it was.

“It's really tasty ... yum!”, said the palace mouse.

And, in no time at all, the palace mouse had fearlessly entered the kitchen. He climbed up the table leg ... got as far as the ham and ... opened his mouth ... But before he could sink his teeth into the ham, a beast leapt out of the oven, an animal with huge whiskers and sharp claws!

“Squeal, squeal, squeal!”

But he couldn't escape; the cat had him in his claws.

“Squeal, squeal, squeal!” “Squeal, squeal, squeal!”

“Munch, munch, munch ...”

The palace cat ate the palace mouse.

And the field mouse, who had stayed at the window, thought,

“If the uncle behaves like that with his nephew, what would he do to me, someone he doesn't know?”

And he went back to his hole in the country — a happy mouse — because he had learnt what palace life was really like.