Later, as there were no more rats, the cats were so hungry that they meowed all the time. Dong had to buy meat from the market every day to feed them.

In ancient times, a man surnamed Dong in the State of Wei was interested in nothing but keeping cats.

Day after day, year after year, the cats multiplied. As they ate meat every day, they even didn't know there were rats in the world which could be caught and eaten. They meowed whenever they were hungry, and whenever they meowed, they were fed with meat. After they ate their fill, they were happy and carefree, lazy and sluggish, and had nothing to do all day.

He kept over 100 cats in his home, which caught and ate all the rats in the house.

In the south of the city, one house was plagued with rats. The rats ran amuck in swarms. Once it so happened that a rat fell into a jar. The master of the house hastened to Dong's home to borrow a cat to catch the rat.

The cat from the Dong family saw the rat in the jar stick up its pointed ears, stare with a pair of pitch-black eyes, shake its red whiskers and squeak. The cat didn't know what a freak the rat was. It only followed the rat moving around on the mouth of the jar, and dared not get into it.

The master was furious at this and pushed the cat down into the jar. At this moment, the cat was panic-stricken and howled loudly at the rat. After a while, the rat eventually found that this cat had no other tricks, so it bit the cat's foot. The Dong's cat was so frightened that it exerted all its strength and made one jump out of the jar and ran away.