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
Cat and Mouse (novella) an unwell Mahlke to dive into the wreck once more to hide, aware that Mahlke might not survive the dive. Pilenz never sees Mahlke again. The title relates to the central metaphor, in which Mahlke is the mouse and society is the cat. Mahlke's large larynx is the leitmotif: ...Mahlke's Adam's apple had become the cat's mouse. It was so young a cat, and Mahlke's whatsis was so active — in any case the cat leapt at Mahlke's throat; or one of us caught the cat and held it up to Mahlke's neck; or I ... seized the cat and