The Tale of the Pie and The Patty Pan

This story is fairly longer than many of the others I have wriiten. Like The Tailor of Gloucester, it is longer with less of my charming illustrations and more of a focus on the story itself. In this story, a cat Ribby invites her dear friend Duchess the dog over for a pie. Duchess happily obliges but becomes worried that the pie will be made of mouse, something he finds quite despicable. So Duchess comes up with the idea to make his own pie and switch the pies while they are cooking and Ribby is not looking.

So Ribby spends most of the afternoon cleaning and tidying her house but she then has to step out to buy muffins and a few last minute provisions. While Ribby is out Duchess sneaks into the house and put her veal pie in the oven. However, Ribby had two ovens, and so rather than switching out the pies, Duchess unknowingly put the pie in the other oven, so both of them were cooking. Do you see the potential conflict? Can you make a prediction as to what might happen?
When Ribby returns she was suspicious that someone had been in the house because she thought she heard something and a drawer in the kitchen was left open. Ribby and Duchess take the time to get ready for the party and Duchess arrives promptly at a quarter after four in the afternoon and Duchess and Ribby have a gay time drinking tea. While adding sugar, Duchess drops her sugar cube on the floor and fetches it under the table. At this very instant Ribby takes her mouse pie, which is now a golden brown, out of the oven and Duchess does not see which oven the pie came out of.

They sit down to dinner and Duchess gobbles up the pie. Although she noticed that the meat was minced finer than the veal pie she had prepared it was not until the pie tin was clean that she realized what she had eaten. For Duchess had prepared her dish with a patty pan (a tin dish that goes in the plate), and Ribby had not. Duchess could not understand why the patty pan was missing although Ribby kept telling Duchess she had not used one. Duchess convinces herself that she must have eaten it without noticing, and is convinces that she will soon die from consuming so much metal.

Confused, Ribby runs to fetch the town doctor to see Duchess. While left alone Duchess finally discovers her veal pie in the other oven and realizes that she had eaten a pie entirely of mouse and not the patty pan after all. Not wanting to explain this to Ribby, Duchess stowes her pie in the back yard and gets it when she leaves, but the birds had gotten to it first and Duchess left the patty pan for Ribby.