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 drunken mouse and the cat “Ah,” says the mouse, “I was drunk at the time.” The story first appeared in the 13th century "Parabolae" of Odo of Cheriton, where the barrel into which the mouse falls is said to be either of wine or beer. Told ‘against those who do not keep their word’, it was also recorded about the same time among the Jewish ‘fox fables’ of Berechiah ha-Nakdan. Later it is found in the 14th century Gesta Romanorum with the comment that what is promised in time of peril is not often fulfilled. In England the proverb ‘drunk as a mouse’ also emerged