Of Mice and Men

I was getting ready to go to sleep Friday night. My bedroom has it's own bathroom, and when moving from bath to bed I saw, lounging cooly upon my place of rest, a mouse. With a house full of furry, fiery felines, you would think no rodent would be so bold but there he was. I must be feeding them too well or something. Seeing the mouse napping boldly on my bed, I called for the cats. I know they heard me, because no one came. They are cats. Thinking swiftly I called for the dog. Lady Bug came into the bed room. She is a cat, but she is species confused and comes when you call for the dogs. At the site of 10 pounds of sheer mouse death the mouse darted. Bug saw the movement and launched herself from the doorway onto the middle of the bed, landing like a cannon ball. I didn't know she could jump so far, unless my stomach was the target, as this is a favored way of letting me know it is time to wake up and feed. She missed by less than a millimeter. I know because I measured the distance between the permanent cat paw indentions on the mattress and the skid marks left by the much smaller mouse paws on the blanket, but all I had was a metric tape measure.

The mouse had made it under a pillow. I was thinking hard now. The sound of the cat hitting the bed had been loud enough to attrack the other cats. Nella was coving the bathroom door incase it made a break for it. One of the favored tactics of my cats is to catch a mouse and drop it in the bathtub. The tub is deep enough the mouse can't climb out, and the cats ring the top of the tub and take turns jumping in and chasing the mouse around the tub. Mice in really good shape have been know to survive 2 or 3 hours of this. I'm not sure whether they are killing the mice or acting as personal trainers. Sometimes I will have pity on the creature and snag it and pitch it out the door. I keep hoping they will spread horror tales among mice about the horrors of the house, but so far it doesn't seem to be working. Bug has one side of the bed covered and is in stalk mode. Nana has the other side covered and is almost as stalky as Bug. Ninja, the old semi-retired Tom cat is watching from the floor kind of bored. He has pretty much turned all the duties of top cat of the house over, leaving him more time for his favorite activities of sleeping, eating, barfing and smacking younger cats heads. Noodle is sitting in the doorway to the front room. I would like to think she is blocking possible escape routes, but the way she is staring at the ceiling makes me think she is expecting the mouse to fly. I watched lots of television as a child and I remember that rodents are really clever and have a lot of tricks. The cats will probably need lots of help, so I decide to get them some gear. Ten minutes of so later I have a nice pile of equipment ready for them. I piled firearms, skillets, baseball bats, anvils, ect on the bed and stood back. Nana gave me an odd look. That's when I remembered that we didn't have animal planet when I was a kid, those were Tom and Jerry cartoons I was watching. I put the stuff up and moved the pillow instead. The mouse wasn't very big, but he was really, really fast. I got a good look at him though, he was grey and had 4 legs, 2 ears, 2 eyes, black and a tail. I am sure I will recognise him if we ever find him. Damn was he quick for having such short legs. I slept on the couch with Ninja, the other cats were busy searching the bed room. I saw noone being trained in the bathtub, which was good, the little bugger was already too damn fast. I also saw no carcass, so I am sure the pesky dude is still on the run. Since then I have felt a little nervous sleeping, as I am sure the little bugger bears me ill will for ratting out the one hiding place, but I am not too worried, I just bring 2 loaded cats to bed with me every night. So far so good.