My walking buddy Georgia and I go down the middle of a quiet residential street and are surprised to see a cat tormenting a real live mouse. The tiny creature rolls over and over as it is batted back and forth between the cat’s paws. When there is a pause in the action, the mouse does not scurry off. It seems to be hanging around for more punishment. Am not sure where this masochistic mouse came from, but it is surely a cat’s dream. Even when the cat lies down in the street, the mouse waits patiently a short distance away. I want to scream at the mouse to run, get out now before the mean kitty inflicts further damage. But since I am not fluent — and in fact know none of the sounds — in mousespeak, I stay silent. The last image I see before continuing to walk is the striped tabby lounging in the street with the mouse sitting only inches from its front paw. Maybe this is one of those love-hate relationships that people often have. Whatever it is, let’s find out more about what cat-and-mouse means.
According to Wikipedia, cat and mouse — often expressed as cat-and-mouse game — is an English-language idiom that means "a contrived action involving constant pursuit, near captures and repeated escapes." The "cat" is unable to secure a definitive victory over the "mouse," who despite not being able to defeat the cat is able to avoid capture. In extreme cases, the idiom may imply that the contest is never-ending. The term is derived from the hunting behavior of domestic cats, which often appear to "play" with prey by releasing it after capture. This behavior may arise from an instinctive imperative to ensure that the prey is weak enough to be killed without endangering the cat.
In colloquial usage, it has often been generalized to mean the advantage constantly shifts between the contestants, leading to an impasse or de facto stalemate. In classical game theory, cat and mouse classifies as a "copycat" archetype whereby there exists no equilibrium, and most importantly, no endgame. Its two protagonists, Dot and Ditto, run amok in their game space to infinity, with no endpoint to their game anywhere in sight attributable to a defective reward system, conflicting incentives. Theoretical active reading on "cat and mouse" or "Dot and Ditto" is ominous in its implication; multiple protagonists, each armed with a passive strategy, can remain theoretically locked in total perpetual war indefinitely, wholly unable to rise to a plateau sufficient to intellectualize their plight.
The term has also been used to refer to the game hide-and-seek.
Literature
Belling the Cat
"Belling the Cat" is a fable also known under the titles "The Bell and the Cat" and "The Mice in Council." Although often attributed to Aesop, it was not recorded before the Middle Ages and has been confused with the quite different fable of classical origin titled “The Cat and the Mice.” In the classificatory system established for the fables by B. E. Perry, it is numbered 613, which is reserved for medieval attributions outside the Aesopic canon.
The fable concerns a group of mice who debate plans to nullify the threat of a marauding cat. One of them proposes placing a bell around its neck, so that they are warned of its approach. The plan is applauded by the others, until one mouse asks who will volunteer to place the bell on the cat. All of them make excuses. The story is used to teach the wisdom of evaluating a plan on not only how desirable the outcome would be but also how it can be executed. It provides a moral lesson about the fundamental difference between ideas and their feasibility and how this affects the value of a given plan.
The story gives rise to the idiom “to bell the cat,” which means to attempt or agree to perform an impossibly difficult task. Historically, it was the basis of the nickname given the Scottish nobleman Archibald Douglas, 5th Earl of Angus. In 1482, at a meeting of nobles who wanted to depose and hang James III's favorite, Robert Cochrane, Lord Gray remarked, “Tis well said, but wha daur bell the cat?” The challenge was accepted and successfully accomplished by the Earl of Angus. In recognition of this, he was always known afterwards as Archie Bell-the-cat.
The first English collection to attribute the fable to Aesop was John Ogilby's of 1687; in this there is a woodcut by Francis Barlow, followed by a 10-line verse synopsis by Aphra Behn with the punning conclusion:
Good Councell's easily given, but the effect Oft renders it uneasy to transact.
According to Wikiwand, the story of the drunken mouse and the cat who rescued him was a joke that appeared in several medieval collections of stories. It is numbered 615 in the Perry Index as among those that were only recorded in the Middle Ages.
A mouse falls into fermenting beer and cries for help. A passing cat offers to pull it out if it will give him a reward when asked. However, when the cat later becomes hungry, the mouse refuses to emerge from its hole to satisfy it. “What about your promise?” the cat asks. “Ah,” says the mouse, “I was drunk at the time.”
The story first appeared in the 13th century “Parabolae” of Odo of Cheriton, where the barrel into which the mouse falls is said to be either of wine or beer. Told “against those who do not keep their word,” it was also recorded about the same time among the Jewish “fox fables” of Berechiah ha-Nakdan. Later it is found in the 14th century Gesta Romanorum with the comment that what is promised in time of peril is not often fulfilled.
In England the proverb “drunk as a mouse” also emerged during the Middle Ages, appearing in the work of Geoffrey Chaucer and John Skelton, among others.
One of the earliest versions of “Belling the Cat” appears as a parable critical of the clergy in Odo of Cheriton's “Parabolae.” Written around 1200, it was afterwards translated into Welsh, French and Spanish. Sometime later the story is found in the work now referred to as “Ysopet-Avionnet,” which is largely made up of Latin poems by the 12th century Walter of England, followed by a French version dating from as much as two centuries later. It also includes four poems not found in Walter's “Esopus;” among them is the tale of "The Council of the Mice." The author concludes with the scornful comment that laws are of no effect without the means of adequately enforcing them and that such parliamentary assemblies as he describes are like the proverbial mountain in labor that gives birth to a mouse.
The fable also appeared as a cautionary tale in Nicholas Bozon's Anglo-Norman “Contes Moralisés” in 1320, referring to the difficulty of curbing the outrages of superior lords. It was in this context too that the story of a parliament of rats and mice was retold in William Langland's allegorical poem “Piers Plowman.” The episode is said to refer to the Parliament of 1376 which attempted unsuccessfully to remedy popular dissatisfaction over the exactions made by nobles acting in the royal name. Langland's French contemporary, the satirical Eustache Deschamps, also includes the story among his other moral ballades based on fables as "Les souris et les chats." It has been suggested that in this case too there is a political subtext. The poem was written as a response to the aborted invasion of England in 1386 and contrasts French dithering in the face of English aggression. The refrain of Deschamps' ballade, “Qui pendra la sonnette au chat” or “Who will bell the cat” was to become proverbial in France if, indeed, it does not record one already existing.
In the following century, the Italian author Laurentius Abstemius made of the fable a Latin cautionary tale titled “The mice who wanted to bell the cat” in 1499. A more popular version in Latin verse was written by Gabriele Faerno and printed posthumously in his “100 delightful fables from ancient authors,” Rome 1564, a work that was to be many times reprinted and translated up to the start of the 19th century. Titled simply "The Council of the Mice," it comes to rest on the drily stated moral that “A risky plan can have no good result.” The story was evidently known in Flanders too, since “Belling the cat” was included among the forty Netherlandish Proverbs in the composite painting of Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1559. In this case a man in armor is performing the task in the lower left foreground. A century later, La Fontaine's "Fables" made the tale even better known under the title “Conseil tenu par les rats.”
In medieval times the fable was applied to political situations and British commentaries on it were sharply critical of the limited democratic processes of the day and their ability to resolve social conflict when class interests were at stake. This applies equally to the plot against the king's favorite in 15th century Scotland and the direct means that Archibald Douglas chose to resolve the issue. While none of the authors who used the fable actually incited revolution, the 1376 Parliament that Langland satirized was followed by Wat Tyler's revolt five years later, while Archibald Douglas went on to lead a rebellion against King James. During the Renaissance, the fangs of the fable were being drawn by European authors, who restricted their criticism to pusillanimous conduct in the face of rashly proposed solutions. A later exception was the Russian fabulist Ivan Krylov, whose adaptation of the story satirizes croneyism. In his account only those with perfect tails are to be allowed into the assembly; nevertheless, a tailless rat is admitted because of a family connection with one of the lawmakers.
There still remains the perception of a fundamental opposition between consensus and individualism. This is addressed in the lyrics of "Bell the Cat," a performance put out on DVD by the Japanese rock band LM.C in 2007. This is the monologue of a house cat that wants to walk alone since "Society is by nature evil." It therefore refuses to conform and is impatient of restriction: "Your hands hold on to everything — bell the cat." While the lyric is sung in Japanese, the final phrase is in English. This is indicative of how influential animal fables of Western origin have become in Asian societies that still appreciate such storytelling, recognizing their ancient purpose of questioning and disrupting traditional social norms.
Several French artists depicted the fable during the 19th century, generally choosing one of two approaches. Gustave Doré and the genre painter Aurélie Léontine Malbet pictured the rats realistically acting out their debate. The illustrator Grandville, along with the contemporaries Philibert Léon Couturier and Auguste Delierre, caricature the backward practice and pomposity of provincial legislatures, making much the same point as did the medieval authors who first recorded the tale. At the end of the century a publishing curiosity reverts to the first approach. This was in the woodblock print by Kawanabe Kyōsui that appeared in the collection of La Fontaine's fables that was commissioned and printed in Tokyo in 1894 and then exported to France. In the upper left-hand corner a cat is seen through a warehouse window as it approaches across the roofs while inside the rats swarm up the straw-wrapped bales of goods. At its summit the chief rat holds the bell aloft. An earlier Japanese woodblock formed part of Kawanabe Kyōsai's “Isoho Monogotari” series from 1870–80. This shows an assembly of mice in Japanese dress with the proposer in the foreground, brandishing the belled collar.
Cat and Mouse in Parternership
"Cat and Mouse in Partnership" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in “Grimms' Fairy Tales.” A shorter version of the tale was included in the Brothers Grimm's manuscript collection of 1808, and published in the first edition of “Kinder- und Hausmärchen” in 1812. Their version is based upon an oral tradition communicated by Gretchen Wild (1787–1819) in Kassel, a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany.
A cat and a mouse — contrary to the custom of their kinds — become friends, such good friends that they decide to share a home. That they might have something to fall back on in time of need, they buy a pot of fat and hide it away in a nook of a church for safekeeping. After a short time, the cat tells her housemate that one of her relations has given birth and that she has been asked to be godmother. Instead of going to a christening, though, the cat goes to the nook of the church and eats the top layer of the fat in the pot. When the cat returns home, the mouse asks the name of the kitten. The cat replies, "Top-off." The mouse remarks that she has never heard such a name.
Soon thereafter, the cat announces that she again has been invited to a christening. On the cat's return, the mouse asks what name was given to this kitten. "Half-gone," answers the cat. Again, the mouse wonders aloud at the oddness of the name.
The cat goes a third time to the church, this time finishing off the fat. When the cat returns, the mouse asks the name given at this christening. "All-gone," answers the cat. Again, the mouse shakes her head.
Winter arrives, and with it the lean times the friends had anticipated. The mouse proposes a trip to the church to retrieve the provisions stored there. When she beholds the empty pot, enlightenment dawns on the mouse: "First 'Top-off,' " she murmurs, "then 'Half-gone,' and then ..." The cat warns her to say no more, but the mouse persists. The cat pounces on the mouse and eats her up. "And that is the way of the world," the story closes.
“Cat and Mouse” novella
“Cat and Mouse” is a 1961 novella by Günter Grass, the second book of the “Danzig Trilogy,” and the sequel to “The Tin Drum.” It is about Joachim Mahlke, an alienated only child without a father. The narrator Pilenz "alone could be termed his friend, if it were possible to be friends with Mahlke"; much of Pilenz's narration addresses Mahlke directly by means of second-person narration. The story is set in Danzig — Gdańsk — around the time of the Second World War and Nazi rule.
The narrator describes the character "The Great Mahlke" from their youth together through to Mahlke's disappearance near the end of the Second World War. Much of the action of the story is on a half-submerged sunken minesweeper of the Polish Navy, on which the narrator, Mahlke and their friends meet each summer. Mahlke explores the shipwreck by diving through a hatch and with his ever-present screwdriver salvages various items — information plaques, objects left behind by the crew and even a gramophone — to sell or collect for himself.
Over the course of the novella Mahlke steals a Knight's Cross from a visiting U-boat captain and is expelled from school. He joins a Panzer division and receives a Knight's Cross thanks to his successes in battle. Returning to the school from which he was expelled, however, the principal forbids him from making a speech to the students, on the grounds of his former disgrace.
The narrative in the story is often fairly incoherent. For instance, the timeline of the narration is often treated flexibly, moving from the narrator's perspective to different points within his memory of the events. There is also disunity about whether Mahlke is addressed in the second or third person, with Grass sometimes changing the form of address within a single sentence, possibly indicating the narrator's inability to remove his own emotions and feelings of guilt from an objective account of Mahlke.
Mahlke, with the help of the narrator, returns to the shipwreck. Mahlke's main reason for entering the war in the first place was to make a speech at his school afterwards. Since he is denied that wish, Mahlke deserts his post, seeing no other reason to fight. Desertion implies treason and in consequence death. Pilenz, whose relationship to Mahlke becomes increasingly ambivalent, takes advantage of the situation and pressures an unwell Mahlke to dive into the wreck once more to hide, aware that Mahlke might not survive the dive. Pilenz never sees Mahlke again.
The title relates to the central metaphor, in which Mahlke is the mouse and society is the cat. Mahlke's large larynx is the recurring image:
...Mahlke's Adam's apple had become the cat's mouse. It was so young a cat, and Mahlke's whatsis was so active — in any case the cat leapt at Mahlke's throat; or one of us caught the cat and held it up to Mahlke's neck; or I ... seized the cat and showed it Mahlke's mouse; and Joachim Mahlke let out a yell but suffered only slight scratches.
The anthropomorphism and metaphorical embodiment of gross social forces is common in Grass's work; here the sentence "It was a young cat, but no kitten" describes the German state in the 1940s — young but by no means innocent. The narrative style — the evasion, self-justification and eventual, chatty disclosure of the truth — is also characteristic.
“Cat and Mouse” science fiction novelette
"Cat and Mouse" is a science fiction novelette by Ralph Williams. Originally published in the June 1959 issue of “Astounding Science Fiction,” it was nominated for, but did not win, the 1960 Hugo Award for Best Short Fiction.
The story is set in Alaska. Its main protagonist is Ed Brown, a trapper who has just begun a winter's stay in the wooded mountains. He soon discovers a "hole" into another world.
At this point in the story, the reader has already been told about the hole and the other world. The other world, named in the story only as World 7, is being used by an alien civilization as an experimental ground for transplanting intelligent life from different planets. However, World 7 has inadvertently been infested with a Harn, an intelligent predator. The entity overseeing the planet, known in the story only as the Warden, needs to eliminate the Harn and decides that the easiest way to do this is to open a portal from World 7 to Earth. The Warden's intention is to have the people of Earth kill the Harn.
His curiosity piqued by what he sees through the portal, Ed Brown passes through and investigates the other world. He soon comes into conflict with the Harn but escapes back through to Earth. The Harn follows him through the portal and a final fight takes place in the mountains of Alaska. The Harn is a colony organism that can produce individuals of different sizes, shapes and armaments, though it is limited by available resources. As the conflict develops, it tries to win by producing two large, lethal individuals.
Ed, being prepared for a winter in a hostile landscape, has several firearms with him, including shotguns, hunting rifles and light "varmint" guns. He has "snakeproof" pants and other backwoods equipment. The creatures are also allergic to tobacco: he can drive off some of the smaller ones by spitting tobacco juice at them.
The narrative dwells on Ed's need to conserve ammunition by not wasting heavy ammo on small targets. He is able to drive back most of the attacks but is left with limited ammunition just as the Harn activates the final attackers. Realizing that the creature must have a central controller, he goes to World 7 while the Harn is mostly on Earth. He finds a burrow by following tracks, pours gasoline in and lights it just as the final attackers appear. They are huge bear-like creatures with fangs, claws and six legs. Ed shoots one several times with his rifle but is injured as it makes a dying lunge. The second creature appears, but fortunately the Harn dies, and it collapses.
The final scene has Ed watching as a stranger looks at the battlefield, smiles at him and disappears. This is evidently the Warden. Ed returns to his normal routine.
“Cat and Mouse (Sheep)” play
“Cat and Mouse (Sheep)” is a 1995 theatre play by British playwright Gregory Motton. It satirizes both the left and right in British society. It was premiered at the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe, Paris and then shown briefly in Britain at the Gate Theatre. It has subsequently only been performed outside Britain. It is published by Oberon Books. In the play, Conservative, capitalist and contemporary left wing politics are merged and discredited, identified as middle-class in their nature and origin and hostile to working class interests.
The play's emphasis on working class interests as being distinct from left wing politics as defined by the middle classes — a phenomenon now broadly discussed and to some degree acknowledged including within the Labor Party — was strongly at odds with opinion amongst British theatre practitioners at a time when left wing consensus centered around the emerging middle class leadership of the Labor Party whose success was to dominate the political scene for the next decade. Cat and Mouse (Sheep) marked the end of Motton's initial popularity with British theatres; the play was not accepted by any theatre managements when it was written in 1992 and has never been produced in Britain. Until that time Motton's major plays had been produced at either the Royal Court or Riverside Studios, Haymarket Theatre, Leicester within 18 months of being written. “Cat and Mouse (Sheep)” had to wait four years before being seen in Britain for six performances in a foreign production.
“Cat and Mouse (Sheep)” is notable for its “plague on both your houses” stance at a time when — in literary and arts organizations in general and the British theatre establishment in particular — a conventional, by then middle class, version of left-wingism was more or less taken for granted and expressed though the choices made by the theatre and other managements. Motton's new work was now as unpopular with managements as it had previously been with critics alike, and the play was only able to be shown in Britain as part of a program of "foreign" plays in a production financed by French money. Motton's was an early and isolated dissident voice, but one of limited effectiveness due to his marginalization in the nascent debate within the left over the direction of the movement. “Cat and Mouse (Sheep)” was written while the middle class leadership established control of the Labor Party and five years before it formed the center-left government under Tony Blair of 1997, and precedes by a decade and a half the last stage of the conflict within Labor over control and direction of the movement, surrounding the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, which Motton, along with others, was later to describe in articles as the end of the same process.
Cat and Mouse (Sheep) was the first of four satires by that author using the same characters. The others are “Gengis Amongst The Pygmies,” “A Holiday In The Sun” and “The Rape Of Europe.”
The play and the subsequent three plays in the series are useful as a register of opinion that was left wing but nevertheless unpopular with the left wing establishment, concentrating as those plays did on the plight of the lowest stratas of the poor both in Britain and abroad and eschewing — or even ridiculing — the more popular issues of gender and race politics that appealed to middle class voters and to theatre audiences and managements. The plays also tended to adopt an accusing tone towards middle-class consumers especially, charging them with hypocrisy and complicity in the exploitation of cheap labor in the Far East. These plays have never been produced in Britain despite some prominent French productions.
The play marks Motton's open opposition to the middle class controlled left, and a switch from his previous apolitical lyricism in plays such as “Looking At You (revived)Again” to political satire. This was followed by a further move to straight polemics in works such as “Helping Themselves -The Left Wing Middle Classes In Theatre And The Arts” and “A Working Class Alternative To Labour.” The latter book is now in the House of Commons Library. These books and the articles that follow them give a clarification of a distinctly working class position in terms of left-wing advocacy and puts forth the case for an independent political movement to represent working class interests.
The play introduces the character of Gengis Khan, an immigrant shopkeeper, an anti-hero with all the faults and attributes of a petty tyrant and a common man, constantly trying to gratify his lusts and greed, but whose very baseness is exceeded by the rapacity and ability to distort — of both capitalists and middle-class left-wingers — who, to his annoyance and indignation, “seem to have got there first.”
A British-Pakistani, shopkeeper, Khan lives with his Irish uncle, “a rather unpleasant middle-aged man keen to follow every latest trend” and his English, prudish, greedy and lascivious maiden aunt. When he begins a price war with his neighbor, his wife Indira immediately leaves him, but he ends up the despotic ruler of the whole country. He receives advice from his manipulative Aunty and Uncle, and his misadventures are chronicled by the obsequious and terrified poet, Dickwitts. Khan's policies are parodies of mixtures of the worst excess of left and right — of capitalism and political correctness — inflicted with relish on a populace already suffering poverty, destitution and ignorance. His wife returns “at the head of a large force” to defeat him, and the play ends with Khan on a chair facing the hangman's noose — the very noose that becomes a fashion accessory in the next of the series “Gengis Amongst the Pygmies.”
Tom and Jerry cartoons
“Tom and Jerry” is an American animated media franchise and series of comedy short films created in 1940 by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Best known for its 161 theatrical short films by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the series centers on the rivalry between the titular characters of a cat named Tom and a mouse named Jerry. Many shorts also feature several recurring characters.
In its original run, Hanna and Barbera produced 114 “Tom and Jerry” shorts for MGM from 1940 to 1958. During this time, they won seven Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film, tying for first place with Walt Disney's “Silly Symphonies” with the most awards in the category. After the MGM cartoon studio closed in 1957, MGM revived the series with Gene Deitch directing an additional 13 “Tom and Jerry” shorts for Rembrandt Films from 1961 to 1962. “Tom and Jerry” then became the highest-grossing animated short film series of that time, overtaking Looney Tunes. Chuck Jones then produced another 34 shorts with Sib Tower 12 Productions between 1963 and 1967. Three more shorts were produced, “The Mansion Cat” in 2001, “The Karate Guard” in 2005 and “A Fundraising Adventure” in 2014, making a total of 164 shorts.
A number of spin-offs have been made, including the television series “The Tom and Jerry Show” in 1975, “The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show” from 1980–1982, “Tom & Jerry Kids” from 1990–1993, “Tom and Jerry Tales” from 2006–2008 and “The Tom and Jerry Show” from 2014–2021. The first feature-length film based on the series, “Tom and Jerry: The Movie,” was released in 1992, and 13 direct-to-video films have been produced since 2002, with a live-action/animated hybrid film released in 2021. A musical adaptation of the series, titled “Tom and Jerry: Purr-Chance to Dream,” debuted in Japan in 2019 in advance of Tom and Jerry's 80th anniversary.
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