The mice agreed that belling the cat was the perfect plan — nobody would do it

A cat had been hunting the mice so relentlessly that they could barely leave their holes. The mice held a council to decide what to do. Many ideas were proposed and rejected. Finally, a young mouse stood up. 'The reason we cannot escape the cat is that we never hear it coming. Let us hang a bell around its neck. Then we will hear the bell and run.' The proposal was met with applause. It was brilliant.

Then an old mouse spoke. 'An excellent plan,' he said. 'But who will bell the cat?' The room fell silent. Every mouse looked at every other mouse. The council adjourned without a volunteer. The cat continued to hunt.

The fable is among Aesop's most quoted, appearing in Greek and Latin sources and in virtually every subsequent collection. The error is not in the analysis — the mice correctly identified the problem and designed a logical solution. The failure was entirely in the decision process: they adopted a plan whose execution risk was assigned to nobody.