Bagpuss Bagpuss Bagpuss is a British children's television series, made by Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate through their company Smallfilms. The series of 13 episodes was first broadcast from 12 February 1974 to 7 May 1974. The title character was "a saggy, old cloth cat, baggy, and a bit loose at the seams". Although only 13 episodes were made, it remains fondly remembered, and was frequently repeated in the UK for 13 years. In 1999 "Bagpuss" topped a BBC poll for the UK's favourite children's TV programme. Each programme began in the same way: through a series of sepia photographs, the
The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse later edition that this retelling appeared. A similar story appears among the fables of Bidpai as "The Lean Cat and the Fat Cat". It is related that 'There was once a poor, lean old woman, who lived in a tiny, tumbled-down house, with a cat as poor and as lean as herself. This cat had never tasted a bit of bread, and had come no nearer a mouse than to find its tracks in the dust.' A sleek, plump cat boasts to her of how it feasts at the king's table and invites her to come and join in next