The Cat and the Old Rat by Jean de La Fontaine

A story-writer of our sort / Historifies, in short, / Of one that may be reckon'd / A Rodilard the Second, -- [1] / The Alexander of the cats, / The Attila,[2] the scourge of rats, / Whose fierce and whisker'd head / Among the latter spread, / A league around, its dread; / Who seem'd, indeed, determined / The world should be unvermined. / The planks with props more false than slim, / The tempting heaps of poison'd meal, / The traps of wire and traps of steel, / Were only play compared with him. / At length, so sadly were they scared. / The rats and mice no longer dared / To show their thievish faces / Outside their hiding-places, / Thus shunning all pursuit; whereat / Our crafty General Cat / Contrived to hang himself, as dead, / Beside the wall with downward head, / Resisting gravitation's laws / By clinging with his hinder claws / To some small bit of string. / The rats esteem'd the thing / A judgment for some naughty deed, / Some thievish snatch, / Or ugly scratch; / And thought their foe had got his meed / By being hung indeed. / With hope elated all / Of laughing at his funeral, / They thrust their noses out in air; / And now to show their heads they dare; / Now dodging back, now venturing more; / At last upon the larder's store / They fall to filching, as of yore. / A scanty feast enjoy'd these shallows; / Down dropp'd the hung one from his gallows, / And of the hindmost caught. / 'Some other tricks to me are known,' / Said he, while tearing bone from bone, / 'By long experience taught; / The point is settled, free from doubt, / That from your holes you shall come out. ' / His threat as good as prophecy / Was proved by Mr. Mildandsly; / For, putting on a mealy robe, / He squatted in an open tub, / And held his purring and his breath; -- / Out came the vermin to their death. / On this occasion, one old stager, / A rat as grey as any badger, / Who had in battle lost his tail, / Abstained from smelling at the meal; / And cried, far off, 'Ah! General Cat, / I much suspect a heap like that; / Your meal is not the thing, perhaps, / For one who knows somewhat of traps; / Should you a sack of meal become, / I'd let you be, and stay at home.'

[1]: _Rodilard the Second._ -- Another allusion to Rabelais's cat Rodilardus. See Fable II., Book II.