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There was once a cat, black of colour,
who lived in a small place, a town of sorts. And this cat would get a daily list of errands, a type of ‘to-do’ list.
This list told him what to do, when to cross streets, where at certain hours to be, and at other times to walk past ladders and boats or on other instances pass by the baker or, at another hour, by the butcher.
This cat in fact spread the message of bad luck to those people who crossed his path. They would then inevitably experience an instance of bad luck throughout the day, and of course they didn't like it. Either a person on the ladder would see the cat then later fall, someone passing by a boat would see it unhook itself and drift away, the baker would burn his bread or a dog would eat the butcher’s meat.
Some tried to avoid these kind of misfortunes, but to no avail and with no luck either. Either they decided not to walk up the ladder but the ladder would then fall on them, or they would lock the boat with a chain but the boat would sink. If the baker saw the cat, he would not bake bread but only cakes, but they would not rise, or in the case of the butcher, he would close the shop and the dog would not be happy, but he wouldn't sell anything.
So one day the dog chased the black cat and the cat had a bit of bad luck as a gust of wind rushed past and blew away his list of errands for the day over the bridge and into the river out of his grasp.
With nothing then to do, the black cat took the rest of the day off. He wandered, light-headed, around the town passing lots of people and meandering through houses and shops. He had a fascinating day touring places he had never seen before, places where people with lots of luck lived. But all his travels seemed to have caused such havoc in the town village. People thought they had received bad luck for the day and that this would be coming to them in one way or another, so they cancelled lots of their meetings and doings.
And the people who were supposed to get the message of bad luck throughout that day had an even worse day, since all those around them seemed to have had bad luck and this trickled back to them. It all became rather chaotic.
The next day the cat got a new black list of what to do, and people were glad to have a little bit of bad luck,
as they knew that it could have been worse.
edited by Janet Cartlidge, copyright © 2011 Fabrice Schomberg
