Summary

“Puss in Boots” (German: Der gestiefelte Kater; Italian: Il gatto con gli stivali; French: Le Maître chat ou le Chat botté) is a European fairy tale about an anthropomorphic cat who uses trickery and deceit to gain power, wealth, and the hand in marriage of a princess for his penniless and low-born master.

The oldest written telling version Costantino Fortunato (Italian for “Lucky Costantino”) by Italian author Giovanni Francesco Straparola, included in The Facetious Nights of Straparola (c. 1550–1553), in which the cat is a fairy in disguise who helps his owner, a poor boy named Costantino, to gain his princess by duping a king, a lord and many commoners. There is a version written by Girolamo Morlini, from whom Straparola used various tales in The Facetious Nights; another version was published in 1634 by Giambattista Basile with the title Cagliuso. The most popular version of the tale was written in French at the close of the seventeenth century by Charles Perrault (1628–1703), a retired civil servant and member of the Académie française.

Puss in Boots appears in DreamWorks’ Shrek franchise, appearing in all three sequels to the original film, as well as two spin-off films, Puss in Boots (2011) and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022), where he is voiced by Antonio Banderas. The character is signified in the logo of Japanese anime studio Toei Animation, and is also a popular pantomime in the UK.

Grimm Stories

You can read the full text here: “Puss in Boots” [Full Text].

Perrault (1697)

You can read the full text here: “The Master Cat; or, Puss in Boots” [Full Text].

Fairy Tales and Bedtime Stories for Kids

You can view the full video here: “Puss in Boots (Puss’n Boots)” [Full Video].

Text Attributions

• Summary: Puss in Boots by Wikipedia. Adapted by Octaviano Gutierrez © Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Licence.
• “Puss in Boots” is free of known copyright restrictions in the United States.