The mice once called a congress to decide on a plan to free themselves of their enemy, the Fat Cat.

Their lives had become filled with terror and constant fear of her claws, never knowing what the cat was going to do or where it was going to be next. They hardly moved as they constantly had to be careful of where they could go, how they could move around and when they could eat and sleep safely without the cat suddenly appearing. Many plans were put forward but they could not fully decide which was the best option because every one of them contained flaws.

Then a young mouse stepped forward and said:
Look, it is quite simple, but I know it will be successful because it will just work. All we have to do is to hang a bell around the Cat’s neck. When we hear the bell ringing, we will know immediately when our enemy is coming.

Brilliant – it was simple and effective and would certainly resolve the problem. They were surprised that they hadn’t thought of it before and all agreed that it was the best action to take.

One old mouse stepped forward and said: I only have one question – Who will place the bell on the cat? The mouse that does this will surely be eaten alive before they have even tried or even if they manage to get close will fail to get away without certain death.

The other older mice immediately replied: well, we cannot do this as we are old and cannot move as fast these days, let the younger ones sort this out amongst themselves as to who will take on this task.

The younger mice responded, but we do not have experience of being around cats, we do not know how so we turn to you, our elders, to resolve this for all of this. How could we possibly know what is needed to do this?  We have ALL decided that this is the best course of action as the Fat Cat will not just go away, but now cannot decide how to go about doing what we agreed upon. So, instead, it is easier for everyone to have second thoughts.

So the Fat Cat kept getting fatter and the MICE continued to squabble amongst themselves whilst continuing to live in fear.

And the Moral of the story is:
It is easy to talk about the best way that something should be done – but quite a different matter to do it.

Aesop’s Fables C. 600 B.C.