In the corner of a house lived a band of mice. But peace they did not have — for that house also had a huge cat! On soft, silent paws he would come, and nobody noticed a thing. Pounce! — one leap. So the mice hid away in their hole all day long.
One day, all the mice gathered in the hole to hold a meeting. "We can't go on like this! We simply must find a way to escape that cat." Everyone nodded hard — but not a single clever idea came.
Then all at once, a young mouse leapt up. "I've got it! What if we tie a little bell around the cat's neck — ding-a-ling! Then wherever he sneaks off to, we'll hear him coming and scurry away first!"
Well, at that the whole meeting burst out cheering! "Oh, what a brilliant idea!" Some clapped, some jumped, and some began to dance. The whole hole rang with delight at the very thought of that little bell.
Just then, from a corner, one old mouse rose slowly to his feet. In a quiet, calm voice, he asked a single question. "It's a fine idea, to be sure. But tell me this — who is going to tie that bell around the cat's neck?"
And just like that — a pin-drop silence fell over the hole. In a single instant, all the cheering died away. One mouse stared hard at the ground; another edged slowly backward. Not one of them dared to say, "I'll do it."
The old mouse smiled gently. "Thinking up a clever plan is easy, little ones. But actually doing it — that is the hard part." And that bell was never, ever tied around anyone's neck.