Anatole and the Cat

Anatole and the Cat by Eve Titus is a short, very French mouse story for 5 year olds about the most respected cheese taster in Paris.

What happens

Anatole has an excellent job. He is the taster at M'sieu Duval's cheese factory, and he is so good at it that the factory makes the finest cheeses in all France.

Nobody there knows he is a mouse. He works at night, after everyone has gone home, and bicycles in from the mouse village once his six children are asleep. Doucette blows him a kiss as he goes.

Then one night he and his friend Gaston hear footsteps on the floor above. A cat.

They try very hard to carry on. It does not go well. Gaston keeps dropping the little signs and Anatole writes down whatever comes into his head.

Which is how, the next morning, the cheese men end up shouting at each other over an instruction to wrap cheese in a banana peel.

M'sieu Duval reads the signs, scratches his head and wonders whether his mysterious taster has invented some brand new cheeses or has simply been working too hard. He sends a memo asking after his health. He is, of course, holding the cat while he does it.

That is the trap Anatole is in. He cannot explain. He cannot be seen. And he will not take scraps like an ordinary mouse, because he is proud of earning his family's bread and cheese himself.

Gaston makes a joke about belling the cat, which turns out to be an old story about a room full of mice who all agreed it was a marvellous idea and not one of whom would do it.

Anatole stops laughing.

It is lovely to read aloud. The French is sprinkled all the way through and you can guess every word of it. Quelle horreur! Au voir! Vive Anatole! There is a whole page of Anatole pacing up and down thinking, and it is genuinely exciting, which is quite a feat for a story about cheese labels.

Nothing bad happens to anybody. The cat is frightening because the mice are frightened, not because the book is. And Anatole is such a splendidly serious little person, worrying about his reputation, his honour and the good name of the factory, that 5 year olds tend to find him very funny without anyone pointing it out.

What to read next

Eve Titus wrote another small, self-important hero. Basil and the Library Ghost has a mouse detective who learnt his trade listening in at 221B Baker Street, off to a college reunion where something very odd is going on.