The Mouse tells Alice a “long and sad tale” in the pool of tears. After Alice shrinks and ends up swimming in her own tears, she encounters the Mouse and tries to speak with him.
The Mouse dislikes cats and dogs, so Alice’s mention of her cat Dinah frightens and annoys him. He begins explaining why he hates cats and dogs, leading into a story about a dog named Fury who takes a mouse to court. Carroll presents the episode as a pun: Alice hears “tale” but looks at the Mouse’s tail, imagining the story in a long, curling shape on the page.
The Mouse’s tale appears across Chapters 2 and 3 of the 1865 novel. Its courtroom parody introduces the book’s recurring habit of treating nonsense as formal logic. The Mouse is sometimes confused with the Dormouse, who appears later at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, but they are different characters. The Disney film omitted the Mouse and gave some of his traits to the Dormouse.