Of Mice and Cats

When I found a dead mouse in my apartment, I thought I had a problem. I spent the week-end checking for signs of mice. I tore my apartment apart and cleaned every inch of it. I found no signs. If it hadn't been for the dead mouse, I would not have known there had been one in my apartment.

I was surprised to find the mouse. My apartment is on the top floor of the building. It's a feature of our building that lots of cats and dogs live here. With the number of cats in between the ground and my apartment, the mouse should have been dead long before it arrived.

It turns out in the end that the mouse was only the beginning of a problem. Not the mouse problem that I had feared, but rather a cat problem. It seems that my overweight and rather lazy cat discovered her true calling - to be an excellent mouser. At first I was nervous about her new tendency to look into corners and under furniture. She can hear far better than me and I began to imagine mice were lurking all about me. Then I realised that when she couldn't find anything, she was coming and chirping at me.

These was a type of chirp that I had not heard since she was a proper kitten. Back then it had meant, "I'm bored, entertain me, play with me." It turns out that it still means that. Quickly improvising a toy for her, I created a ball out of paper which I then flicked towards her. To my astonishment, rather than batting it back, she ran and hid behind a piece of furniture. She crept round the furniture and peered around the corner. Intrigued, I backed my ball behind the ottoman and flicked it out into the open, but away not towards her. She bolted out and ran after the ball, batting it with her paws until it came to rest against the wall. She turned and looked at me as if to say, "Um, it stopped moving. Do something about it." Slight pause. "please."

l went and picked it up and batted it towards her. She just looked at me and did not move. I went and retrieved the ball, and took it behind a corner of the furniture. She watched to see what I was doing and then turned her back. I flicked the ball out and it started to go some distance. Quick as a flash, she turned and chased the ball. "Now you're showing off!" And she was. She demonstrated her mousing technique to me. One hides, crouches and seems unconcerned in the affairs of others and then just when the mouse thinks the coast is clear, you pounce. At this point the demonstration falls flat and she kinda looks at the ball and at me, "Well you get the idea, there is slightly more to it than this but look at what I'm working with. It gives up so easily."

I have a mouser who has no mice.