In fairness, there have been a lot of versions of this over the past 15 centuries, not always with the same moral. The Wikipedia writers here have not plumbed

In fairness, there have been a lot of versions of this over the past 15 centuries, not always with the same moral. The Wikipedia writers here have not plumbed the full depths of this, and have not yet reached Paul Franklin Baum. * https://www.jstor.org/stable/2915573 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2915573 Nor have they incorporated that one Piers Plowman text had a proposal to kill the cat, not to bell it. * https://www.jstor.org/stable/4172513 https://www.jstor.org/stable/4172513