Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act 1913 was viewed as violating basic human rights, not only of the suffragettes but of other prisoners. The Act's nickname of "Cat and Mouse Act", referring to the way the government seemed to play with prisoners as a cat may with a captured mouse, underlined how the cruelty of repeated releases and re-imprisonments turned the suffragettes from targets of scorn to objects of sympathy. The Asquith government's implementation of the Act caused the militant WSPU and the suffragettes to perceive Asquith as the enemy — an enemy to be vanquished in what the organisation saw as an all-out war. A related
The Old Cat and the Young Mouse have one's own way. A mouse, caught by an experienced cat, begs for her life, arguing that at present she is small and would be better left to fatten and make a meal for the cat's offspring. He replies that such conduct goes against his nature; his children will feed themselves without his help. The story relates to two earlier fables by La Fontaine. It contrasts with The Cat and an Old Rat (III.18), in which an experienced rat is too canny to be taken in by a cat's tricks and takes care to address it at a distance. In