Several days ago I was being good and moving some things out of the house into the garage for storage. While doing this I had the door open to the garage, as I was going in and out. No big deal, right? The big garage door was closed so my cats couldn’t get outside, it was only for a few minutes so the house wasn’t losing too much heat or anything.<\/p>\n
Later that night I’m on the computer and my mom is sitting in the recliner. The cat goes running past all helter-skelter and slides into the bookshelf. “What was that?!” mom says. I shrug, “cat is chasing a toy.” Then I saw something, too, dashing across the living room and into the kitchen under the washing machine. Oh shit. There’s a mouse in the house.<\/p>\n
Now this is a problem for one very specific reason: I don’t kill things. If you know anything about me you know that I am very soft-hearted towards animals, I have a history of volunteering for different animal causes, and yes that even applies to mice. They are cute little furry creatures. In my childhood I owned a hamster and some gerbils, I have experience with rodents. Mostly I just can’t bear the thought of me killing something that was simply unfortunate enough to get stuck in my house. I just want to catch it and move it back outside.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately I also have the aforementioned cat. Two of them, actually, but one is quite fat and snores loudly, so I kind of figured he wasn’t going to be much of a threat to the mouse. But Jojo? Yeah. He’s going to catch that mouse.<\/p>\n
I had some plans of capturing the mouse under a container, but I discovered that there are a lot of hard to reach places a mouse can hide in my kitchen. Washer and dryer, range, fridge, freezer, the list goes on. I can’t even move them. Basically I was just stuck scratching my head.<\/p>\n
Later that evening I hear the cats making noise, pouncing, scratching type noise. (I can immediately tell what is going on in my house just from a quick sound. I assume I got this superpower from being a mom. It comes in quite handy with the kids.) So I run in there and Merlin – the fat cat – has jumped on top of the mouse. He seems equal parts giddy as hell and stunned. I push him off the mouse, which immediately runs into a box. YES! This is exactly what I wanted! It’s trapped in the box! Except it ricochets off the bottom of the box and leaps out… right in front of Jo. Who immediately grabs it in his mouth. I’m yelling and hitting the cat, the cat tries running off but has nowhere to go, the mouse is squeaking. He loses his grip and the mouse runs away into a corner. My heart is racing, Jo looks totally tweaked on drugs or something as he prowls around looking for the mouse. I’m saying “Shit! Shit!” and stomping my feet because I can’t find the damn thing. But neither can the cat. I worry that the mouse is injured. Shit, an injured mouse loose in my house is even worse than a live healthy one. What if it’s suffering? What if it dies under something? Shit, shit.<\/p>\n
I wake up in the morning scared I’m going to find a dead carcass somewhere. I do not. Later on the cat repeats his performance and I’m still trying to figure out what the hell to do. It gets away again, but I have the same worry about it being injured. Clearly the cat can and will catch this mouse, and clearly I can’t even when I’m standing right there. I’d order a live mouse trap but I have a very strong suspicion this mouse will not survive the two days until it gets delivered.<\/p>\n
Third time it happens I open the front door and chase the cat out. This time if he lets it go it will escape outside, where I want it; it’s easier to catch a cat outside than to catch a mouse inside. If it’s alive still. I got a look before they went out – it didn’t look good. I’m pretty sure Jo was not going to give up this time. I go get a broom then try getting him to let it go. I fail. It’s dark. I hear noises I really don’t want to hear. The whole thing just grossed me out so bad. My cat ate the damn mouse.<\/i> I’m all pissed off and upset. I know that’s what cats do, but ugh.<\/p>\n
Now the cat is acting all puffed up like he’s king of the damn jungle, yowling at the door wanting to be let outside to go rule his kingdom. Tough shit, cat. Go take a nap on the couch. I’m sure you’re exhausted after committing murder.<\/p>\n
At least my house no longer has a mouse in it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Several days ago I was being good and moving some things out of the house into the garage for storage. While doing this I had the door open to the garage, as I was going in and out. No big deal, right? The big garage door was closed so my cats couldn’t get outside, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4337"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4340,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4337\/revisions\/4340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}