Once upon a time, there were a king and a queen and their puppy.
The king and queen named the puppy before the queen had even popped it
out, which explains why the puppy’s name was Beauty, even though she
ended up being a bulldog. The king and queen were quite
chagrined, and vowed that they would never make such a gross parenting
mistake again, but then they went right out and invited a bunch of
furry-fairies to Beauty’s christening party, only they forgot to invite
the fattest furry-fairy of them all – Furry-fairy Fluffy, the infamous
Persian cat.
Actually, they didn’t really forget to invite her; it’s just that after
they made her invitation, they “accidentally” dropped it into the
fire. You see, Furry-fairy Fluffy was not very good to have at a
party because she ate all the food and only wanted to talk about
herself.
And so the
christening party was in full swing, and everyone was having
a grand time, when suddenly there came a pounding at the door.
Some poor fool opened it, and Furry-Fairy Fluffy came barreling into
the banquet hall.
Well, she barreled halfway into the banquet hall, but then she
got
stuck in the doorway. And now she was really mad. She
yowled, “How could you have a party and not invite me?” at the same
time scrambling at the threshold to get inside. “Here I am,
trapped in the doorway and starving to death!” When her pitiful
cries failed to arouse any sympathy, the obese furry-fairy tried
another tack.
She put a dreadful curse on Beauty that went something like this:
“Meowrow? Purrpurr mew meow purr meOW!” and then she promptly fell
asleep.
The king and queen had this curse translated into dog language
immediately, and it turned out that it meant, “GrrrrrrrARF! Woof
woof yelp! Bowowowowow! Woof!” A truly terrible curse indeed!
“Woe is us!” howled the king and queen. “We don’t want our poor
Beauty to eat a poisonous pig’s foot and die!” Which was, of course,
the evil Furry-fairy’s curse translated into English. Fortunately the
queen knew a little magic, so she was able to transform the curse into
a reversible curse. The princess would eat a poisonous pig’s foot
– there was no getting around that – when you’re a dog, and there are
pig’s feet lying around, who really checks to see if they’re poisonous
first? But instead of dying, she would fall into a deep sleep,
which could be ended by the kiss of a pawsome prince after a hundred
years.
The king, though, felt a certain empathy for whatever prince might have
to kiss his daughter (who was a bulldog, you remember), and ordered all
pig’s feet banned from the castle.
But banning pig’s feet from a castle is harder than potty training a
puppy, and sure enough, on Beauty’s fourth birthday, she found a pig’s
foot that one of the page-puppies had snuck in, and ate it. It
was poisonous. She fell asleep.
A lot of time passed, but nothing interesting happened.
Then a hundred years later, a gallant prince came sniffing into the
castle, searching for adventure – or perhaps even a mole – and came
upon the princess. When he saw her, he fainted from horror at her
ugliness and fell flat on top of her.
Well, that woke her up. “Yelp!” she cried. “Bad Dog!”
The prince was devastated. He put his nose in his paws and
began
whimpering. Beauty decided maybe she had judged him too
harshly. “You’re not a bad dog. You’re a good dog.”
The prince perked up.
“Do you want to get married?” Beauty asked.
The prince looked at her face again, sniffed her butt, sniffed
her butt
again, decided that looks weren’t everything, and said, OK!”
At their wedding, Beauty and the prince had lots of pig’s feet, no
furry-fairies, and then they lived happily ever after.
© 2004 Valerie
Hoy
