Wednesday, June 26, 2024

The Painter of Cats - Part One


In a little village there was a little boy called Kihachi. The boy was very clever, polite and kind too. But there was one strange thing about the boy. The boy would draw life-like cats all the time. Worse, he did nothing other than draw cats.

Instead of studying at school, Kihachi would draw cats. Even when the other children were playing, Kihachi would spend his time drawing cats. At home, when Kihachi’s brothers and sisters slept, Kihachi would draw cats on the paper partition in the room.

There seemed to be no end to this, as Kihachi draw cats on his clothes too.



This annoyed Kihachi’s mother. She took the boy to Kihachi’s father. “Our other children have all learnt something useful. Our other sons help you on the farm and our daughter helps me at home. This boy does nothing and his school teacher also says that he does not learn much at school. We have to do something about him.”

Kihachi’s father was perplexed. Kihachi was very polite, but if he did not learn anything useful, Kihachi’s father did not know what to do.

Finally, both the parents decided that Kihachi would make a good priest.

Kihachi’s parents decided to take Kihachi to a temple so that he would forget his cats there.

Adapted from Japanese Folktales


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