As the Cat Mas­ter became fat­ter and fatter,

His ret­in­ue of mice became smal­ler and smaller:

If it’s grain that he’s eating,

 Where did the furry cat fae­ces come from? 

After hav­ing fooled some pigeons, the deceit­ful cat ate them. Since pigeons no longer ven­tured around him,  he was unable to get hold of even one of them.

He made a liv­ing by steal­ing all the pos­ses­sions of a Gelong one by one, and selling them at the mar­ket. One day, while he was steal­ing the Gelong’s mala, the monk saw him. Due to the Gelong reach­ing with one hand after the cat and strongly pulling his tail, the cat’s tail broke off into his hand and the cat escaped.

  In addi­tion to being an aged cat, he had also lost his tail and so his dex­ter­ity dimin­ished. He con­sequently became help­less and ema­ci­ated due to hun­ger from not being able to catch any mice. 

While adorned with the Gelong’s mala around his neck, the cat addressed some mice in the fol­low­ing way, “All of you!  Don’t be afraid of me.  Although in the past I per­formed quite a lot of wrong deeds, now, how­ever while in the pres­ence of the Gelong, I received Upa­saka vows. Not only am I keep­ing the five basic train­ings, in addi­tion, I have also aban­doned eat­ing red foods (meat). Now, I can teach you all the Dharma.” Thus, he pre­ten­ded to give a Dharma talk with a soft melodi­ous voice.

The mice believed what the cat said and every even­ing they gathered to receive his Dharma teach­ings. Once the teach­ing was fin­ished, while the mice were return­ing home, the cat caught whichever was the last one to leave and ate it. 

Due to this situ­ation, as the cat gradu­ally became fat­ter and fat­ter the num­ber of mice became few­er and few­er. Uncom­fort­able with this, the mice had a meet­ing dur­ing which the chief mouse, by the name of Raphen, examined the cat’s excre­ment and saw that there was mouse bone and fur, hence he knew that the cat was telling lies. How­ever, he pre­ten­ded not to know and addressed the cat, “Dear Pre­cious Teach­er, what kind of food do you eat?” “I don’t eat any­thing but a little grain and leaves”, the cat replied.

 Then, Raphen related the sequence of events to the mice and every­one was very shocked and sur­prised. “So, what do we need to do now?” the mice said.  Raphen replied, “I have a plan”, and he told them about it.  The fol­low­ing day, dur­ing the Dharma teach­ing, the mice offered a small bell by way of a gift to the Cat Mas­ter and it was fastened around his neck. While return­ing home after the Dharma teach­ing was over, every­one looked back at the same time since the ringing bell resoun­ded loudly for all to hear. The catch­ing and killing of one mouse by the cat was mani­fest for all to see. Since that time, cats always bury their excre­ment under the earth.