There was a cat who was the scourge of rats. Not Alexander nor Attila were so fierce or feared, nor so ambitious: he’d have liked to make all vermin everywhere extinct. He did kill more than arsenic, mousetraps, or both combined.
The rats, before too long, refused to leave their dens. The cat, to draw them out, pretended to be dead by dangling upside-down from rafter rope.
The rats supposed him punished, hung for some filched meat or cheese, for scratching someone, or for some other misdeed.
“We’ll dance upon his grave!” they cried. “And at his funeral we’ll laugh!”
Thus taking courage, slowly they emerged, alertly, noses twitching, step by step. At last, en masse and gleeful, they foraging went.
Instead of feasting, they were feasted on. The cat, reviving, dropped, and caught the laggards.
“That’s just one old trick I know,” he said, while gobbling rats in gulps. “No hideout can preserve you! Every one of you I’ll eat!”
This prophecy proved true, or largely so. A second ambuscade he soon devised, and, crouching in a tub for kneading, camouflaged himself with flour.
He waited; soon came little scurrying steps: his prey to their demise.
One only rat, an old and tailless veteran, tarried. From a distance he declared, “That cat-sized lump of dough don’t fool me. I’m not getting near!”
The mother of security is fear.