they went to the palace to see who lived in it.  When they looked in in the evening, they at once recognised Lita’s wife and her lover; but these two were in constant terror of being pursued and when they had had their evening meal they fastened and bolted every entrance so securely that no one could gain admittance.  Then the cat and the otter told the rat that he must collect all the rats of the neighbourhood and they must burrow through the wall and find some way of abstracting the magic ring.

So the rat collected a crowd of his friends and in no time they bored a hole through the wall; then they all began to look for the ring; they hunted high and low but could not find it; however the cat sat at the entrance of the hole which they had made and vowed that they should not come out, unless they got the ring.  Then the first rat climbed on to the bed in which the couple were sleeping and searched their clothes and examined their fingers and toes but in vain; then he thought that the woman might have it in her mouth so he climbed on to her chest and tickled her nose with the tip of his tail; this made her sneeze and behold she sneezed out the ring which she had hidden in her mouth.  The rat seized it and ran off with it and when the cat was satisfied that he had really got it, she let him out and the three friends set off rejoicing on their homeward journey.  They crossed the river in the same way as when they came with the cat riding on the otter and the rat on the cat:  and the rat held the ring in its mouth.  Unfortunately when they were halfway across, a kite swooped down to try and carry off the rat.  Twice it swooped and missed its grasp but the second time it struck the rat with its wing and the rat in terror let the ring fall into the river.

When they reached the bank the three friends consulted what they were to do in this fresh misfortune.  As the otter was the only one who could swim it volunteered to look for the ring, so it plunged into the water and searched the bottom of the river in vain; then it guessed that a fish must have swallowed the ring and it set to work to catch every fish it saw and tore them open; at last in the stomach of a big fish it found the ring, so it brought the fish to the bank and while they were all rejoicing and eating a little of the fish a kite swooped down and carried off the fish, ring and all.

The three animals watched the kite flying away with the fish; but some women who were gathering firewood ran after the kite and took the fish from it and putting it in their basket went home.  Then the otter and the rat said to the cat “Now it is your turn:  we have both recovered the ring once, but we cannot go into the house of these humans.  They will let you go near them easily enough; the ring is in the fish’s stomach, you must watch whether they throw away the stomach or clean it, and find an opportunity for carrying off the ring.”