“Is it a modern feminist version? Absolutely. It is an old version that has not passed through the sieve of the nuns and their education for young ladies who were to become demure wives.”
— Ana Cristina Herreros
What comes to swallow us up?
A Spanish folktale about a mouse and her cat husband examines the process whereby women lose and reclaim themselves.
The True Story of a Mouse Who Never Asked for It is based on the older, more radical version of “La Ratita Presumida”—a folktale still told to this day that became popular in Spain and Latin America only after it had been transformed into a moralizing fable about knowing your proper societal place as a woman.
“To all the mice that once ended up in the claws of a cat.”
—Ana Cristina Herreros, in her dedication to
The True Story of a Mouse Who Never Asked for It
The most popular version of the story told today goes something like this…
Once upon a time, there lived a little mouse who was very conceited. One day, while sweeping in front of the door to her house, she came across a gold coin. As soon as she saw it, she began to think of what she could do with it:
“I could buy some sweets... but better not, because then my belly will hurt. The coin could buy me some pins... no, not that either, because pins could prick me... I know! I will buy a silk ribbon to tie into bows.”
And that’s just what the little mouse did. With a bow on her head and a bow on her tail, the mouse went out onto her balcony for all to see.
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That’s when a donkey appeared:
“Good morning, little mouse, how beautiful you are!”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Donkey,” said the little mouse, with a smug tone of voice.
“Will you marry me?”
“It depends. What sound would you make at night?”
“Hee-haw, hee-haw!”
“Oh, no! No! You'd scare me.”
The donkey left, sad and crestfallen. But just at that moment, a rooster arrived.
“Good morning, little mouse. You look especially pretty today, so much so that I have to ask you to marry me. Will you have me as your husband?”
“Maybe. And what sound would you make at night?”
“Cockle-doodle-doo, cockle-doodle-doo!” said the rooster, trying his best to sound good.
“Oh, no! That would wake me up.”
That’s when her neighbor arrived: a little mouse who was in love with her.
“Good morning, neighbor!” he said.
“Ah! Hello, neighbor!” she said, not even sparing him a glance.
“You look very pretty today.”
“Yes… Well, thanks, but I can't stop to talk to you, I'm very busy.”
The neighbor mouse left dejectedly. And then, Mr. Cat arrived.
“Hello, little mouse!”
“Hello, Mr. Cat!”
“You are dazzling today. Tell me, would you marry me?”
“I don't know... and what sound would you make at night?”
“Meow, meow!” said the cat, with a very sweet meow.
“Of course, I will! I will marry you!”
The day before the wedding, Mr. Cat told the mouse that he wanted to take her to the forest for a picnic. While the cat was getting the fire ready, the little mouse opened the basket to set the table, and—
But the basket was empty! And there was only a fork and a knife… Just where was their meal?
“Right here! You are the meal!” said the cat as he pounced on her.
But fortunately, the neighbor mouse, who had had his suspicions about the cat from the very beginning, had followed them into the forest. So, when he heard the cat’s declaration, he took a stick, lit it from the fire, and held it close to the cat's tail. The cat ran away, terrified and screaming, and that’s how the mouse managed to save his neighbor.
“Thank you, little mouse,” she said.
“You're welcome, little mouse. Will you marry me now?”
“And what sound would you make at night?”
“Me? I would sleep and be quiet, little mouse, sleep and be quiet.”
And so, the two little mice got married and lived happily ever after.
Uncovering the true story of the mouse...
Author Ana Cristina Herreros discusses her research
Folklorist Ana Cristina Herreros uncovered a different, older version of the tale in the collection of 19th-century Mallorcan folktales of Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria. In this telling, the mouse-protagonist isn’t conceited or foolish at all: she works hard to make herself a home, and she is eaten by the cat because such is the nature of these two animals, not out of punishment for her vanity or pride.
According to Herreros, this older story was twisted into the popular version told today in the late 19th century, at the hands of Catholic schools in Spain looking to push their own agenda: women’s religious orders founded colleges to educate girls to be good wives, which meant choosing the right man to marry and submitting to their husbands in all things. For Herreros, there is no need to look any further than the archduke’s collection for a feminist take on the folktale:
“This has been my job, to look for old and true versions, which speak a symbolic—and therefore, universal—language, and to create my own versions, which is how I contribute as an author.”
The story Herreros found in the archduke’s collection, and the retelling she presents in this picture book belong to a long line of stories told to teach girls how to identify and protect themselves from predators.
“In some ways, the belly of the cat is the cave of initiation, from which you stop being a girl and become a woman. Because this story, like all stories, is a rite of passage.”
— Ana Cristina Herreros
Creating a visual language of animals, people, and pain
Illustrator Violeta Lópiz shares her process
From mimicking older illustration styles, to following the text as literally as possible, to depicting only humans and no animals, it took illustrator Violeta Lópiz several attempts to find a visual approach that felt right for this project. “It was very complicated because I had only engaged with the text in its form, not its content,” she explains. After much experimentation, she realized that her illustrations needed to face three different challenges:
Using animals to talk about human behavior, while still preserving some animal peculiarities;
Bringing the moralistic underpinnings of the ancient Balearic folktale into a modern-day context;
Weaving together a unified narrative from a long and detailed text.
In the end, she decided to paint all her illustrations on very large fabric, so that she could stand up and use a quick and fresh stroke. With blue and red, gray and beige, white and black, Lópiz portrays a mouse and a cat interacting with a variety of household objects, creating a visual narrative that is both puzzling and provocative.
“It was very complicated because I had only engaged with the text in its form, not its content.”
–Violeta Lópiz, illustrator of
The True Story of a Mouse Who Never Asked for It
i.
An Inventory of Objects
The illustrations begin by following a little mouse, as she explores an inventory of objects. In this section, in which the mouse makes her house, chooses the cat as husband, and feels ill and gets hurt, Lópiz wished to mirror the dizzyingly repetitive rhythm of the text, evoking a sense of monotony with the same layout for all pages and using the same objects in different ways to represent different characters, settings, or themes.
“Illustrating with objects allowed me to support the text in its complexity, establishing connections and unifying the story. I approached it as if with a magnifying glass, so more time or more reading would become necessary to understand the book.”
–Violeta Lópiz, illustrator of
The True Story of a Mouse Who Never Asked for It
ii.
From Kitten, to Cat, to Abuser
Then, the story focuses on the cat, as he grows from kitten to adult tomcat. The text details the cat’s quest for some thread to stitch up his bleeding mouse-wife, as the illustrations show an ever-growing cat entangled in some string. For Lópiz, this section represents the passage of time and the difficulties of life. At the level of the plot, the cat must grow in size and age before he can complete the narrative and be ready to catch and eat a mouse. On a more symbolic level, Lópiz wanted to show the cat as an abuser, and how often anger and frustration stem from building resentment and repeated rejection.
iii.
Silent but Revealing
But at the climax of the story, when the cat eats up the mouse, the story is hidden under white double-gatefolds. Once these are open, the scene zooms out from mouse, cat, and objects to reveal a room in disarray—and for the first time, a human: a woman standing in the corner, taking in the mess. In a silent coda, she gets to work, sweeping the floor and putting all the familiar objects, whose context is now fully revealed, back in their place.
In this final, wordless section, Lópiz borrowed from the world of theatre, where a house turned upside down often represents abuse, and the body language of Pina Bausch. She was also influenced by Herreros’s explanation that eating someone can symbolically mean depriving that person of something, like freedom or space, their rights or their body.
“I wanted to show the two realities: people and animals. But I wanted to talk about pain with humans, not animals personified, and without placing guilt or blame. And I wanted to give a way out of that pain.”
–Violeta Lópiz, illustrator of
The True Story of a Mouse Who Never Asked for It
Without text, with only the illustrations, it is up to readers to interpret the tragedy of the mess—and the hope of reconstruction.
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