Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Late Night Guest

Here's the scene, I'm up last night (or early this morning I guess) around 3:30 a.m. feeding Dylan. I see out our bedroom door that our cat Louie is in a crouched down position, wiggling his bum and frantically whipping his tail. For those of you with cats, you know, that's the "I'm about to pounce on something and tear it up" position.

So I watch, to see what he's after. Sometimes it's a shadow, sometimes it's his catbrother Baby, sometimes it's a baby toy. Sometimes it's a mouse.

As I'm sitting there, Louie comes bounding into our room, prize in mouth. It's a mouse. This time, it's a mouse.

"Louie's got a mouse. Louie's got a mouse!"
I nudge my sleeping husband. He gets out of bed with such force and fury (it is pre-4 am after all) that he scares Louie out of the room and Louie drops the mouse which then scurries under the oven.

Bob bangs around a little bit, curses, returns to bed.

"It went under the stove, I can't get it from under there. I'll get it when it comes back out and Louie gets it. It'll come back out."
While he gave he this speech, he was falling asleep. By the last word, he was out like a light. I was slightly jealous.

I was still feeding Dylan. All the commotion started him fussing so I was pretty awake at this point.
Maybe three minutes later, a tiny gray body pops out from under our bathroom door. It's the mouse. It looks like a miniature chinchilla.

"The mouse is in the room." I whisper to Bob, thinking he'll be able to get Louie and Louie can catch the mouse again.

Instead, Bob jumps up out of bed and hisses at the mouse. Then he chases after it, into the bathroom, out the other door into the laundry hallway, into the kitchen.

"It's still too fast, I can't catch it." he said.

"That's why I whispered dude. I thought you could get Louie." I said.

"Oh." he said. "I can't believe it's 4 o'clock in the morning and I'm running around chasing a mouse."

I laid Dylan back in the bassinette and went back to bed where Bob and I laid awake chatting for a while. Neither one of us could get back to sleep. After awhile, we both had to pee (sorry, nature calls) and went into our bathroom very cautiously, checking the floor for a mouse, stepping very carefully. The coast was clear.
I peed, Bob waited. As we went to make the switch, Bob walked over near the shower.

"Oh, there it is!!" I said pointing to the corner where the shower meets the wall.
Bob jumped up so high, I thought he was Michael Jordan. He jumped back like a chick. It was hilarious.
The little mouse was just cowering in the corner "If I don't move, maybe they won't see me" he seemed to be thinking.
Oh, we saw you.

I got out of the bathroom and sat up on the washing machine for a good view of the action. Bob went to get Louie to finish off his project. Louie sniffed the mouse, but couldn't be bothered. He looked at us like "Yeah, so?"
Bob removed Louie from the area of the mouse.
"If you're not going to kill him, I will."
Bob picked up one of his heavy shoes, and BLAMMO! One shot, dead mouse.

The corpse was removed, a moment of silence was observed.
We went back to bed.

"I can't believe you jumped back like that! That was hilarious. I am SO putting that in my blog."

"Yeah well, I killed the damn mouse, you make sure you put THAT in your blog too."

18 comments:

Jason said...

I love cat stories. Trouble used to be quite a killer, but he hasn't done much lately. The nice thing about his younger days is that he'd kill what he caught, tear it to shreds, and leave the steaming corpse in the yard as a warning. No prizes to show off to the family.

Jessica said...

Our Louie is very much a sharer. He likes to display his war spoils in the house. He actually prefers to do the majority of his killing inside, where there's an audience.

Jessica said...

I know. I watched the murder, it was Sopranos style brutal, but quick.

I proposed that we capture the mouse, strap him down and give him the lethal injection cocktail. But, as I started musing on which household chemicals would be most effective and painless, Bob just grabbed a shoe and...well...spirited the mouse to heaven.

Chris said...

Hector is a useless son of a bitch.

A shoe? The last mouse I caught went down the disposal.

Jessica said...

Now, THAT is Sopranos style brutal.

God help you! That is gruesome.

Jason said...

actually, that's gruesome, yes. But actually pretty quick and probably instantaneous death.

Jessica said...

Quick is good.
How did your wife feel about the violation of her garbage disposal...probably not well.

Bern said...

I better seal up the garbage disposal if ever Trouble does catch a mouse or frog or Barbaro. Or I'll forever mentally smell a dead carcass each time I use the sink.

Chris said...

Elizabeth walked up as I just finished and looked like she might be ill. It *was* quick and that was the point.

Quick is humane. Achilles, my old cat, caught a robin a year or two ago. The bird was large and severely wounded.

Let's just say it's not as easy to break a bird's neck as it seems on TV and in the movies. Quick and efficient (say, a hammer or in the mouse's case, a disposal) is the way to go.

Chris said...

Bernie: Elizabeth has since bought a little set of "disposal beads" to remove smells from the garbage disposal. This is despite the fact that there is no smell to get rid of. It's all in her head.

Jessica said...

I told my husband your method of killing the intruder, and he got this look on his face like, "Yes, yes! That is the way to do it." And as he sat there nodding his head he said, "next one, next one."

So, yeah, thanks for that.

Bern said...

Ok, I'm taking notes. "Buy Disposal Beads"!!!

eaf said...

It was the most gruesome noise I have ever heard. I came downstairs and hear the disposal grinding away and Chris was standing over it like... well, like that cat that got the canary. Our conversation (paraphrased and made funnier) is below:

ME: Please tell me that was not the mouse.

CHRIS: *blink*

ME: It wasn't alive was it?

CHRIS: Not for long.

ME: I prepare FOOD in that sink.

CHRIS: The food you prepare was in the pantry and is now covered in mouse poop and saliva.

ME: *blink*

CHRIS: The mouse is gone, isn't it?

ME: Don't ever do that again. Hammering the bird was bad enough. I'm going to work.

Jessica said...

It just must be that primal kill instinct that men have.
As I said before, MY husband was thrilled by the prospect of grinding a mouse in the garbage disposal.
Our particular brand of disposal IS called the Bone Crusher.

Chris said...

Jessey said:
I told my husband your method of killing the intruder, and he got this look on his face like, "Yes, yes! That is the way to do it." And as he sat there nodding his head he said, "next one, next one."

So, yeah, thanks for that.


My pleasure.

eaf: Like you even remembered the bird before I mentioned it. I'm the one who has to deal with the killin', so unless you're volunteering all of a sudden... :-)

Plus, it's not like you can't clean the damn sink. We're not dealing with hazardous waste. It's no more unsanitary than uncooked poultry or anything else you have to clean up afterwards. Use some bleach and ammonia.

It's all in your imagination!

eaf said...

For the record, I remember that bird like it was yesterday. I remember the chirping from the garbage, forcing you to go to the garage with the dead-ish bird and the hammer to finish the job.

Let's not pretend that I don't get traumatized easily... this is the woman who suffered symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder two days after a bad NIGHTMARE.

Jessica said...

This is a HOT topic!

This morning Louie the Slayer brought in a lizard (of course, alive) and played with it for awhile before getting mad at it and killing it...RIGHT ON THE BABY'S PLAYMAT! Ew.

I threw it out onto the front deck and subsequently discovered that it was only MOSTLY dead, which of course means slightly ALIVE.
Ew.

Chris said...

Jessey: Nice Princess Bride reference!

eaf: Sorry, hon - I forgot about how delicate you are. The chirping I had actually blocked out... I was too annoyed at the time to take it to heart. By that point I was in a "Will you just fucking die already!" mode.