They did call Nibble. He came a-hopping. He squeezed in as close as ever he could get to that oil-can. “Well!” he exclaimed, “if it isn’t the lady mouse who saved my life when Ouphe the Rat was after me! You needn’t worry, Ma’am. My hunting friends won’t hurt you.”
“They can’t,” chuckled the mouse. “Even Ouphe’s wicked grandsons couldn’t. They gnawed my front door till their teeth ached but they couldn’t make it any bigger, and even their grabby paws wouldn’t reach to the bottom of it. But I’ve sat here listening and listening and squirming in my skin because they were listening, too, so I couldn’t get out to warn you. This is what I heard:
“All the mice from the Woods and Fields are living in the stack of grain Tommy Peele’s father grew to feed the cows in the winter time. Not just a few of us, like other years, but hundreds and hundreds all nibbling and destroying it. Before long there won’t be anything left. Then, the rats say, the cows will go wild and the men will starve, and the mice will have all these houses and barns and everything else that’s in them. But the rats will rule over them. You know what that means. I’d rather have men.”
Nibble Rabbit’s face was as long as his ears when he backed out of the haystack. And he repeated every word the lady mouse had just been telling him.
“Hm!” remarked Stripes Skunk who had been listening with his head on one side. “Looks to me as if it was time for us Woodsfolk to do something. Let’s call a meeting. Doctor Muskrat, Chaik Jay, and Tad Coon are still to be heard from. Here, sons,” he waved a paw, “go bring them.” And off scuttled his three kittens.
Well, to make a long story short, a meeting they had. But little good did it do them. The mice were in the stack; they didn’t have to leave it for any reason, and unless they did, none of the Woodsfolk could catch them.
“Urr-wrr!” growled Watch uneasily after the fiftieth time they’d been over the question. “We might do something if we could make the cat talk with us.”
You ought to have seen the Woodsfolk prick up their ears when Watch the Dog spoke of the cat. Nobody else knew a single thing about her, but instead of listening to what Watch had to say they all began to talk at once—isn’t that always the way?
“What good can that cat do? She’s a sneak and a liar,” said Nibble Rabbit.
“A cat has no friends—she always hunts alone,” put in Stripes Skunk.