From the Book of One Thousand Tales

THE SULTAN’S CAT

CHAPTER I

There was a Turkish Sultan who had a cat.  It was a handsome cat.  It had a beautiful speckled fur, a long bushy tail and eyes that gleamed at times like emeralds and at times like gold.

This cat came from a certain province in Asia Minor (the Biblical Asia).  The Greeks had founded the city and called it Ankyra, hoping that there they had laid anchor.  When the Turks overran Asia Minor, looted and devastated the city of the anchor, they also perverted the Greek name into Enguri which later was orthographised in Europe as

Angora.  The province possessed a species of handsome cats which were known in Europe as Angora cats. 

Now this cat, whether it was angry that it had been brought from its native haunts to the Sultan’s palace on the Bosphorous or whether it was natural disposition, displayed a vicious temper

It might have been content to live in the Sultan’s Palace, a gem of architecture, the creation of the genius of a non-Turkish brain, built on the banks of the Bosphorous, in a city that had been founded by a Byzantine Emperor and bore his name Constantinopolis (Constantine’s City), but instead the cat sulked, tore the silken and velvet cushions of the Sultan’s divan and smashed the costly porcelain cups and dishes on the Sultan’s table imported from China.

Thereupon the Sultan procured a trainer to train the cat into good manners, and so effectively was the work of the training completed that the cat became as accomplished as a courtier in the art of receiving his august master’s guests, and could understand whatever was required of him to do when the Sultan spoke his commands.  The Sultan was so highly gratified with the new qualifications of his pet that he conferred upon it the title of Effendi.  All the servitors of the Palace and the Sultan’s Ministers from the Grand Vizier downwards and even the Sultan himself, addressed the cat as Effendi.

The Sultan had a necklace made for his pet in the form of a collar, it was studded with diamonds, emeralds and sapphires, the precious stones came in order like this:  An emerald set in a cluster of diamonds, then a sapphire set in diamonds and so on

alternately until the circlet was completed.  The Sultan had also golden bells fastened to the cat’s paws and the bells tinkled whenever the cat walked.

Now it happened that it came to the Sultan’s knowledge about certain stories published and circulated in Europe very detrimental to the Turkish character, in particular one great Orator in a certain European country had made a public speech denouncing the Turks as worse that savages.