In a certain forest there once lived a fox, and near to the fox lived a man who had a cat that had been a good mouser in its youth, but was now old and half blind. The man didn’t want puss any longer, but not liking to kill it, took it out into the forest and lost it there. Then the fox came up and said, “Why, Mr Shaggy Matthew! How d’ye do! What brings you here?”––“Alas!” said Pussy, “my master loved me as long as I could bite, but now that I can bite no longer and have left off catching mice––and I used to catch them finely once––he doesn’t like to kill me, but he has left me in the wood where I must perish miserably.