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Cat and Mouse, published in Germany in 1961 as Katz und Maus, is a novella by Günter Grass, the second book of the Danzig Trilogy. It is about Joachim Mahlke, an alienated only child without a father. The narrator Pilenz "alone could be termed his friend, if it was possible to be friends with Mahlke" (p. 78); much of Pilenz's narration addresses Mahlke directly. The story is set in Danzig (now Gdańsk) around the time of the Second World War and Nazi rule.
The title relates to the central metaphor, in which Mahlke is the mouse and society is the cat. Mahlke's large larynx is the leitmotif:
...Mahlke's Adam's apple had become the cat's mouse. It was so young a cat, and Mahlke's whatsis was so active — in any case the cat leapt at Mahlke's throat; or one of us caught the cat and held it up to Mahlke's neck; or I ... seized the cat and showed it Mahlke's mouse; and Joachim Mahlke let out a yell, but suffered only slight scratches. (p. 6)
The anthropomorphism and metaphorical embodiment of gross social forces is common in Grass's work; here the sentence "It was a young cat, but no kitten" describes the German state in the 1940s — young but by no means innocent (p. 5). The narrative style — the evasion, self-justification, and eventual, chatty disclosure of the truth — is also characteristic.
Oskar Matzerath, protagonist of The Tin Drum, makes an appearance as "a little brat, who must have been about three, pound monotonously on a child's tin drum, turning the afternoon into an infernal smithy" (p. 17). He appears later in reference to the "Dusters" as "a three-year old child whom the gang had cherished as a kind of mascot" (p. 86).
In 1961 an attempt was made to put the book on the index of Germany's Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons, particularly due to a scene of group masturbation, in which Mahlke displays his enormous penis and remarkable sexual endurance. After protest from both the public and other writers the request was withdrawn.
References
The quoted English edition is:
- . ISBN 0-14-002542-1.
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