The Cat's Funeral

Once a cat, hoping to catch some mice, made himself a cat sized coffin and lay still in it, pretending to be dead, thinking,
"When the mice see me lying still in this coffin they will think I am dead and will gather round to jeer and when they do - ha!- then I will leap out and eat them all up".
And when the mice saw the cat in the coffin they did gather round it but, much to the cats surprise, they didn't jeer at all.
Infact, the mice all began to sob.
"Poor mister cat", said one of the mice, "You know he wasn't such a bad fellow, even though he would chase us, its still very sad that he should die".
"I agree", said another, "Life won't be the same without the cat".
Some little mice even picked a red rose and, carrying it together, laid it ontop of the cat.
But then the cat, listening to this and smelling the rose, started to become very moved.
"Why they really liked me", he thought, "I never knew".
And the cat became so moved that he started to cry.
Unfortunately the moment that he started to cry all the mice heard him crying and realised he was not dead and had only been trying to trick them
But then, thinking that they would now play a trick on the cat, the mice all picked up the lid of the cats coffin and placed the lid on top of it and then they started to bang on the coffin as if they were hammering in nails saying,
"Now we must hammer in the nails and then we will take him and bury him".
Terrified of being buried alive the cat leapt up with a shriek from the box and when he did he tried to chase the mice but he accidentally stood on the thorny rose and, while he was hopping about with a thorn in his paw, all the mice, laughing, ran away.