The Two Cats and the Clever Monkey

Two cats — one grey, one white — were walking the same lane from opposite ends when they arrived, at the very same moment, at the very same roti, fallen warm from somebody’s kitchen window.

“Mine!” said the grey cat. “I saw it first.”

“Mine!” said the white cat. “I smelled it first.”

“Half, then,” grumbled the grey cat at last, and tore the roti in two.

But the halves — as anyone could see — were not quite equal. One was a little fatter. Both cats stared at the fat half, and their whiskers began to twitch, and they did not trust each other one bit.

“YOUR half is bigger!”

“No, YOURS is!”

Now, trouble like this has a way of attracting helpers, and down from the banyan tree swung a monkey, wearing the kind and serious face of somebody arriving to be useful.

“Friends, friends! What luck — I happen to carry a weighing scale.” (He did. It’s best not to ask why.) “Fairness is my life’s work. Allow me.”

The cats, who wanted to beat each other more than they wanted to eat, agreed at once.

The monkey set up his little scale and placed one piece in each pan. Down sank the fatter piece.

“Tch, tch. Unequal,” said the monkey gravely. “But easily fixed.”

And he bit a chunk off the fatter piece and chewed it slowly.

Now the other pan sank down.

“Oh dear. Now this one’s heavier. Fairness is such delicate work.” Chomp — a bite off the second piece.

Down went the first pan again.

“Tch!” Chomp.

Up. Down. Chomp. Down. Up. Chomp, chomp. The scale swung, the monkey chewed, the pieces grew smaller and smaller and more and more equal, and the two cats sat watching their dinner disappearing bite by bite into the machinery of perfect fairness — each cat still glad, at every single bite, that at least the other cat wasn’t getting the bigger piece.

At last two crumbs sat in the pans, exactly equal, exactly tiny.

“There!” beamed the monkey. “Perfectly fair. My fee!” — and he swallowed both crumbs, patted his round belly, and swung back up into the banyan, where he fell asleep with the smile of a well-fed public servant.

The two cats sat by the empty scale for a long, quiet while.

“We had a whole roti,” said the grey cat, finally.

“We had a whole roti each,” said the white cat, “if you count that half a roti with a friend tastes bigger than a whole one alone. My Amma says that.”

“Your Amma wasn’t here when we needed her,” sighed the grey cat.

They walked the lane together after that, the grey cat and the white cat, and when — some days later — a warm pakora fell from the very same generous window, the two of them looked at it, then at each other, then up at the banyan tree, where a certain scale-owner was already stirring hopefully.

“Half and half?” said the grey cat, quickly.

“Half and half,” said the white cat, quicker. “And if your half looks bigger — good. You’re my friend.”

They ate in the shade, shoulder to shoulder. Up in the banyan, the monkey looked down at all that friendship, sighed at the collapse of his business, and went back to sleep hungry.