A quirky, visually inventive animated film, or the sort that started becoming popular for artists to make in the USSR in the 1980s. According to Gorlenko's interview in Sergey Kapkov's book "The Legends of Soyuzmultfilm" (which can also be read here), he tried to tell this story without words, but in his opinion he failed, and the mouse's lesson doesn't come across visually. I thought it was perfectly understandable when I watched it for the first time, though. There's a nice scene at 8:57, in which you can see the entire "circle of kindness", that hammers the lesson home.