4
To stop palace rats, a priest demanded milk, silk cushions, and jewels for a ‘holy’ cat. Tenali starved the scam with a simple experiment.
The priest insisted the cat’s sanctity required rich offerings. The rat problem somehow worsened. Tenali replaced milk with water and the cushion with a mat. The cat hunted efficiently by the second night. “Holiness,” Tenali told the king, “is not proven by how softly one sleeps, but by what one does when the bowl is plain.” The priest lost his stipend; the cat kept her job under a humbler title: Mouser-in-Chief.
