The Cat and the Mice

The Greek version of the fable recorded by Babrius concerns a cat that pretends to be a sack hanging from a peg in order to deceive the chickens, but his disguise is seen through by a rooster.

The moral lesson taught by these stories is summed up by the English proverb 'Once bitten, twice shy'.

The Phaedrus version of the fable is separately numbered 511 in the Perry Index and is prefaced by advice on the need to keep one's wits about one.

[2] It relates how, in order to catch mice, a weasel that has grown old rolls itself in flour and lies in a corner of the house until its prey approaches.

In the woodcut illustrating it, the cautious mouse is peering over a sack at the whitened hind-quarters of the cat on the opposite side of the barn.