The Weasel and Aphrodite[a] (Ancient Greek: Γαλῆ καὶ Ἀφροδίτη, romanized: Galê kaì Aphrodítē), also known as Venus and the Cat is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 50 in the Perry Index.

Babrius does not state that Aphrodite released the mouse, instead writing that "[a]fter having played his little joke, Eros took his leave: Nature had proved stronger than Love.

"[7] When the fable was related by Hieronymus Osius in a Neo-Latin poem, nearly half of it was taken up by a consideration of basic unchangeability, the sense being echoed by internal rhyme and assonance: "Difficult to elicit, illicit,/ change where nature's innate".

[8] During the troubled political situation at the time the edition of Aesop's fables illustrated by Francis Barlow was published, Aphra Behn gave a sly Royalist tilt to her summing up of the tale's meaning: "Ill principles no mercy can reclaime,/ And once a Rebell still will be the same".

Except in the one important respect, the transformed cat accorded to the 18th-century social norm and From a grave thinking Mouser, she was grown The gayest Flirt that coach'd it round the Town.

Not only did the work inspire Offenbach to write his opera but it was also indirectly responsible for Frederick Ashton's late ballet of that name, created in 1985 for a gala in honour of Fanny Elssler in Vienna.

[13] Interpretations in the Fine Arts include Millet's chalk and pastel drawing of the fable (c. 1858) in which a black cat with shining eyes enters and looks toward a startled man who pokes his head through the bed curtains (see opposite).

Later the subject featured as Plate 25 in Marc Chagall's etchings of La Fontaine's fables[14] in which a figure with the head of a cat but the well-developed body of a woman looks out from the picture while leaning on a small table.