Aggada -- Translations into English; Bible. Old Testament -- Legends; Jewish legends; Midrash -- Translations into English
Night after night
he begged for shelter, without ever finding a home. Finally, he decided
to repair to the house of Adam, who also granted him refuge for one
night. When wild animals approached the house under cover of darkness,
the dog began to bark, Adam awoke, and with his bow and arrow he drove
them away. Recognizing the dog's usefulness, he bade him remain with
him always. But as soon as the cat espied the dog in Adam's house, she
began to quarrel with him, and reproach him with having broken his oath
to her. Adam did his best to pacify the cat. He told her he had himself
invited the dog to make his home there, and he assured her she would in
no wise be the loser by the dog's presence; he wanted both to stay with
him. But it was impossible to appease the cat. The dog promised her not
to touch anything intended for her. She insisted that she could not
live in one and the same house with a thief like the dog. Bickerings
between the dog and the cat became the order of the day. Finally the
dog could stand it no longer, and he left Adam's house, and betook
himself to Seth's. By Seth he was welcomed kindly, and from Seth's
house, he continued to make efforts at reconciliation with the cat. In
vain. Yes, the enmity between the first dog and the first cat was
transmitted to all their descendants until this very day.[172]
Even the physical peculiarities of certain animals were not original
features with them, but owed their existence to something that occurred
subsequent to the days of creation. The mouse at first had quite a
different mouth from its present mouth. In Noah's ark, in which all
animals, to ensure the preservation of every kind, lived together
peaceably, the pair of mice were once sitting next to the cat. Suddenly
the latter remembered that her father was in the habit of devouring
mice, and thinking there was no harm in following his example, she
jumped at the mouse, who vainly looked for a hole into which to slip
out of sight. Then a miracle happened; a hole appeared where none had
been before, and the mouse sought refuge in it. The cat pursued the
mouse, and though she could not follow her into the hole, she could
insert her paw and try to pull the mouse out of her covert. Quickly the
mouse opened her mouth in the hope that the paw would go into it, and
the cat would be prevented from fastening her claws in her flesh. But
as the cavity of the mouth was not big enough, the cat succeeded in
clawing the cheeks of the mouse. Not that this helped her much, it
merely widened the mouth of the mouse, and her prey after all escaped
the cat.[173] After her happy escape, the mouse betook herself to Noah
and said to him, "O pious man, be good enough to sew up my cheek where
my enemy, the cat, has torn a rent in it." Noah bade her fetch a hair
out of the tail of the swine, and with this he repaired the damage.
Thence the little seam-like line next to the mouth of every mouse to
this very day.[174]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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