Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons

"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons" is a classic science fiction short story by American writer Cordwainer Smith, first published in Galaxy Magazine in 1961, and partly based on Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

[2] Cordwainer Smith is a pseudonym of Paul Linebarger, the noted China expert, who wrote most of his published science-fiction stories within the setting of the Instrumentality of Mankind.

The sheep that were brought to this planet by the Australian immigrants suffer a local infection that causes them to grow larger than houses; completely immobile, they require constant attention.

He consults the Guild's encyclopedia, which says that the phrase is an archaic term for the disease caused by the stroon virus — no-one being aware that this is a cover story planted by a Norstrilian agent.

Resident on the moon is Mother Hitton, a woman who is the "weapons mistress" and in charge of the care and feeding of the "Littul Kittons", which are in fact mink that have been selectively bred for centuries for psychotic, self-destructive madness.