“The Cat Who Thought She Was a Dog and the Dog Who Thought He Was a Cat”
by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Once there was a poor peasant, Jan Skiba by name. He lived with his wife and three
daughters in a one-room hut with a straw roof, far from the village. The house had a
bed, a bench, and a stove, but no mirror. A mirror was a luxury for a poor peasant. And
why would a peasant need a mirror? Peasants aren’t curious about their appearance.
But this peasant did have a dog and a cat in his hut. The dog was named Burek and the
cat Kot. They had both been born within the same week. As little food as the peasant
had for himself and his family, he still wouldn’t let his dog and cat go hungry. Since the
dog had never seen another dog and the cat had never seen another cat and they saw
only each other, the dog thought he was a cat and the cat thought she was a dog. True,
they were far from being alike by nature. The dog barked and the cat meowed. The dog
chased rabbits and the cat lurked after mice. But must all creatures be exactly like their
own kind? The peasant’s children weren’t exactly alike either. Burek and Kot lived on
good terms, often ate from the same dish, and tried to mimic each other. When Burek
barked, Kot tried to bark along, and when Kot meowed, Burek tried to meow too. Kot
occasionally chased rabbits and Burek made an effort to catch a mouse.
The peddlers who bought goats, chickens, eggs, honey, calves, and whatever was
available from the peasants in the village never came to Jan Skiba’s poor hut. They
knew that Jan was so poor he had nothing to sell. But one day a peddler happened to
stray there. When he came inside and began to lay out his wares, Jan Skiba’s wife and
daughters were bedazzled by all the pretty doodads. From his sack the peddler drew
yellow beads, false pearls, tin earrings, rings, brooches, colored kerchiefs, garters, and
other such trinkets. But what enthralled the women of the house most was a mirror set
in a wooden frame. They asked the peddler its price and he said a half gulden, which as
a lot of money for poor peasants. After a while, Jan Skiba’s wife, Marianna, made a
proposition to the peddler. She would pay him five groshen a month for the mirror. The
peddler hesitated a moment. The mirror took up too much space in his sack and there
was always the danger it might break. He, therefore, decided to go along, took the first
payment of five groshen from Marianna, and left the mirror with the family. He visited the
region often and he knew the Skibas to be honest people. He would gradually get his
money back and a profit besides.
The mirror created a commotion in the hut. Until then Marianna and the children had
seldom seen themselves. Before they had the mirror, they had only seen their
reflections in the barrel of water that stood by the door. Now they could see themselves
clearly and they began to find defects in their faces, defects they had never noticed
before. Marianna was pretty but she had a tooth missing in front and she felt that this
made her ugly. One daughter discovered that her nose was too snub and too broad; a
second that her chin was too narrow and too long; a third that her face was sprinkled
with freckles. Jan Skiba too caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and grew
displeased by his thick lips and his teeth, which protruded like a buck’s. That day, the
women of the house became so absorbed in the mirror they didn’t cook supper, didn’t
make up the bed, and neglected all the other household tasks. Marianna had heard of a
dentist in the big city who could replace a missing tooth, but such things were
expensive. The girls tried to console each other that they were pretty enough and that
they would find suitors, but they no longer felt as jolly as before. They had been afflicted
with the vanity of city girls. The one with the broad nose kept trying to pinch it together
with her fingers to make it narrower; the one with the too-long chin pushed it up with her
fist to make it shorter; the one with the freckles wondered if there was a salve in the city
that could remove freckles. But where would the money come from for the fare to the
city? And what about the money to buy this salve? For the first time the Skiba family
deeply felt its poverty and envied the rich.
But the human members of the household were not the only ones affected. The dog and
the cat also grew disturbed by the mirror. The hut was low and the mirror had been
hung just above a bench. The first time the cat sprang up on the bench and saw her
image in the mirror, she became terribly perplexed. She had never before seen such a
creature. Kot’s whiskers bristled, she began to meow at her reflection and raised a paw
to it, but the other creature meowed back and raised her paw too. Soon the dog jumped
up on the bench, and when he saw the other dog he became wild with rage and shock.
He barked at the other dog and showed him his teeth, but the other barked back and
bared his fangs too. So great was the distress of Burek and Kot that for the first time in
their lives they turned on each other. Burek took a bite out of Kot’s throat and Kot hissed
and spat at him and clawed his muzzle. They both started to bleed and the sight of
blood aroused them so that they nearly killed or crippled each other. The members of
the household barely managed to separate them. Because a dog is stronger than a cat,
Burek had to be tied outside, and he howled all day and all night. In their anguish, both
the dog and the cat stopped eating.
When Jan Skiba saw the disruption the mirror had created in his household, he decided
a mirror wasn’t what his family needed. “Why look at yourself,” he said, “when you can
see and admire the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the earth, with all its forests,
meadows, rivers, and plants?” He took the mirror down from the wall and put it away in
the woodshed. When the peddler came for his monthly installment, Jan Skiba gave him
back the mirror and in its stead, bought kerchiefs and slippers for the women. After the
mirror disappeared, Burek and Kot returned to normal. Again Burek thought he was a
cat and Kot was sure she was a dog. Despite all the defects the girls had found in
themselves, they made good marriages. The village priest heard what had happened at
Jan Skiba’s house and he said, “A glass mirror shows only the skin of the body. The real
image of a person is in his willingness to help himself and his family and, as far as
possible, all those he comes in contact with. This kind of mirror reveals the very soul of
the person.”