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Perry's Index to the Aesopica

Fables exist in many versions; here is one version in English:

THE CAT AND THE BIRDS

The cat pretended that it was his birthday and invited the birds to a party. When the birds had come in, the cat seized the opportunity: he shut the doors of his house and proceeded to devour the birds one after another.
This fable can be applied to people who set off with high hopes of something pleasant but who actually experience the exact opposite.

Source: Aesop's Fables. A new translation by Laura Gibbs. Oxford University Press (World's Classics): Oxford, 2002.
NOTE: New cover, with new ISBN, published in 2008; contents of book unchanged.


In Perry 389, a cat invites the birds to his birthday party and eats all the guests. In Perry 577, the same story is told about a predatory bird (a crow in Romulus, a hawk in Caxton).

Perry 389: Gibbs (Oxford) 95 [English]


You can find a compilation of Perry's index to the Aesopica in the gigantic appendix to his edition of Babrius and Phaedrus for the Loeb Classical Library (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1965). This book is an absolute must for anyone interested in the Aesopic fable tradition. Invaluable.