A kingdom overrun with rats

There came a season when the granaries and kitchens of Vijayanagara found themselves under siege by rats in such numbers that no amount of trapping or poisoning seemed to make the slightest dent in their ranks, and King Krishnadevaraya, tired of losing good grain to bad vermin, issued a royal decree that every household in the city keep a cat. It was, on the face of it, sound policy — cats being notoriously unsentimental about rats — and for a week or two the city dutifully filled itself with cats fetched from wherever cats could be fetched, Tenali Rama's own household among them.

A gift of cows, and an unwelcome obligation

The trouble, as the king's ministers were quick to point out once the cats were already distributed, was that a cat fed only on rats grows thin and sullen and eventually stops bothering to hunt at all, whereas a cat given regular milk stays sleek and diligent — so a second decree followed the first, and the crown generously supplied a milking cow to every household that did not already own one, Tenali's included, so that no cat in the kingdom should ever want for its saucer. Tenali accepted his cow with the correct show of gratitude and considered, privately, that a free cow was a fine thing, and that a cat's claim on its milk was rather less binding than the king seemed to imagine.

A lesson taught to the cat in one hot lesson

He solved the difficulty in the most direct way available to him: he boiled the milk until it was scalding, poured it into the cat's dish exactly as usual, and let the animal learn, in a single painful and entirely memorable lesson, that the saucer it had been trained to expect was now a source of genuine danger. The cat yowled, fled the dish, and — being a sensible creature, whatever else might be said of it — never again came near a bowl of milk set out for it, hot or cold, leaving the entire supply free for Tenali's own table, where he drank it himself with a clear conscience and a growing appreciation for his own ingenuity.

A royal inspection, and a cat that will not cooperate

Months went by in this comfortable arrangement, and Tenali's cat grew plump on rats and left the milk to its owner, until word came that the king himself intended to tour the city and inspect how faithfully his subjects were caring for their cats — a piece of royal curiosity that put Tenali, for once, in something of a spot, since a fat, well-fed cat was expected to show at least some interest in the saucer of milk that would inevitably be set before it for the king's benefit.

The saucer that gave everything away

When the royal procession reached his house, Tenali produced his cat with every appearance of confidence, and, as custom required, poured out a generous saucer of milk before the assembled company to demonstrate how well the animal was kept. The cat took one look at the steaming bowl, remembered with perfect clarity the single scalding lesson it had received months before, and fled the room as though the king himself had thrown something at it — leaving Tenali standing over a full, untouched saucer of milk in front of the one man in the kingdom least likely to overlook the sight.

An explanation that turns embarrassment into a joke

Krishnadevaraya, more amused than offended, asked directly why a cat so evidently well-fed should bolt from its own milk, and Tenali — never a man to waste a good confession when a great one was available — told him the whole story plainly: how he had scalded the cat once to spare himself the trouble of sharing his own cow's milk, and how the animal had never trusted a saucer since. The king laughed long and loud at the sheer unrepentant cheek of it, remarking that he had asked every household in his kingdom to feed a cat, and only Tenali Rama had found a way to have the cow, the cat, and the milk all to himself.