"
Master Cat; or, The Booted Cat" (; ), commonly known in English as "
Puss in Boots", is a European literary
fairy tale about a cat who uses trickery and deceit to gain power, wealth, and the hand of a princess in marriage for his penniless and low-born master. The oldest record of
written history dates from Italian author
Giovanni Francesco Straparola, who included it in his
The Facetious Nights of Straparola (c. 1550-53) in XIV-XV. Another version was published in 1634, by
Giambattista Basile with the title
Cagliuso. The tale was written in French at the close of the seventeenth century by
Charles Perrault (1628–1703), a retired civil servant and member of the
Académie française. The tale appeared in a handwritten and illustrated manuscript two years before its 1697 publication by Barbin in a collection of eight fairy tales by Perrault called
Histoires ou contes du temps passé. The book was an instant success and remains popular.