Vijayanagara was once having a terrible time being overrun by mice. They made everyone’s life a misery, eating food, getting into granaries, biting the animals and even babies. The people asked the King for help, making no effort to deal with the mice on their own.
The King was known to be generous. He immediately ordered that every house should be given a cat and money should be given to feed and look after the cat. The Royal Treasurer and the courtiers were horrified! The Treasury would be empty soon. And all because of cats! But they could say nothing to the King.
The order was carried out and everyone got a cat.
Tenali Raman also got one. After a while, the King wanted to know how things were going on. The adhikaris reported that there was no improvement. The mice were still all over the place. The King asked for the cats to be brought for him to see.
All the cats were shown to the King. They all looked fat and well fed. There did not appear to be anything wrong with them. So what was happening?
Then Tenali Raman came carrying his cat. It was looking thin and pathetic, unlike all the other cats. The King was surprised.
“Don’t you feed your cat, Tenali Raman?” asked the King.
“No, Sir,” he replied, “It will not drink any milk.”
“A cat and it does not drink milk? Impossible! Fetch a plate of milk for this cat.” But Tenali Raman was right. The cat did not touch the milk. The King asked him to explain.
“Sir, if I fed the cat, it would not catch mice, so I gave it a plate of very hot milk the first time. It got scalded and since then, it refused to touch the milk. But it caught the mice. I used the money you gave to run my house, Sir,” confessed Tenali Raman.
The King laughed and realized that giving cats and money for them was really not right. The people should do some things on their own! Tenali Raman looked at the Treasurer and they exchanged a very secret smile.
