Community Stands up to Cat
Local Mouse's Tail Returned
The community has banded together in an unprecedented act of bravery and kindness in order to restore a local mouse's lost tail. In the latest of the grisly cat attacks, a cat cornered Sam Autumn, 42, pinned him down and bit off his tail.
"I thought I was going to die," Autumn said. " I closed my eyes tight and prepared for the worst, but he just made me watch while he played with it! The monster!"
After several minutes of taunting and torture, Autumn had passed out. The cat started to leave with Autumn's tail in his mouth. But, a local mouse, Will Finch, in a brave and unselfish act, leaped out from his hiding place and faced down the cat.
"I don't know why I jumped out. I'm no hero. I was underneath that car for what felt like forever watching him demoralize that poor mouse. I just snapped. I couldn't take it anymore. Someone had to stand up to these beasts!" said Finch.
Finch demanded that the cat return the mouse's tail, but then quickly found himself pinned down.
"He said he wasn't going to eat the tail because that's the worst part of a mouse," Finch said. "He asked me if I wanted to know the best part. At that moment, I have to be honest, I regretted standing up to him."
But, the cat released Finch from under his paw, sat down and gave him a proposition. He would give him the tail for a bowl of milk.
Finch didn't have a bowl big enough or enough milk to appease the cat, so he ran from door to door asking people to gather all of their milk to pour into the town square fountain. The cat sat and waited for hours while the community gathered to pour their milk into the fountain.
"I don't know if it was out of some twisted sense of honor or respect for the mouse that got all of this started, but the cat just sat and watched us pour the milk," one mouse said. "Maybe I'm crazy, but he looked surprised at how many of us showed up."
Hundreds of mice showed up to pour their milk, others just showed up for support. Markets were cleared of their entire stock of milk, and for the first time, the fountain square fountain flowed with milk instead of water.
In a couple minutes, the cat drank the milk that took hours to gather, emptying the fountain with Autumn's tail still hanging from the side of his mouth.
He then looked up, spat the tail into the fountain and left. The crowd rushed Autumn and his tail to Mercy Hospital where he is now recovering.
In a press conference this morning, Mayor George Shrub announced that the city government would reimburse anyone who bought milk in the ordeal if they could show a receipt. He added that the water in the town square fountain would, from now on, be dyed white to commemorate the event.
"This day will always be remembered as the day that the mice stood up to the cat," said Shrub.
When asked if he would like to say anything to the mice who helped him get his tail back, Autumn could only say "Thank you."
Author's Note: The original story for this one had the mouse himself going through a lot of trouble to get his tail back. The cat wanted milk in turn for the tail just like in mine, but in order to get the cat some milk, he had to go to the cow who wanted hay. In order to get some hay, he had to go to the farmer who wanted meat. To get the meat, he had to... well, you get the point. While the idea of a mouse having to go through all of this trouble to get this important limb back was fun, it didn't fit in my world I've created. The people don't know mice can talk, so the mouse can't approach people. Moreover, my setting is a sewer underneath New York City. There are no cows and no farmers. I had to do something different, so I chose to have the community band together to symbolically get their dignity back. The tail is important to the mouse. It's a part of their identity and "mouse-hood" if I may. So, getting the tail back was a symbol of the community turning a corner and standing up to the cat, which is exactly what they did. We will never know if this event actually made the cats move on and leave the mice alone, because we only have one day's worth of information in the newspaper. But I think it's fun to decide whether they left them alone or not. What do you think?
Original Story: "The Cat and the Mouse" by Joseph Jacobs, from English Fairy tales (1890). Web Source: Sacred Texts Archive
Image Information: Cat with mouse's tail. Web Source: Main Lesson