He looks like a bad ass, doesn't he? Well, . . . he's NOT! Turns out he's a big ole pushover, and I had to find out the hard way. Allow me to elucidate.
It all began about two weeks ago. It was a Monday in January, to be specific concerning the time frame for this story. I came home in a rush after a day of teaching to change quickly and prepare to go to another town to watch my grown son play basketball with his men's league team. I had enough time to throw in a load of laundry, and then I was going to toss it in the dryer quick before I left. When I started the dryer, I heard a horrible racket of what I took to be excess lint being blown through the vent hose. I cussed a bunch because I'm diligent about cleaning out the lint screen to avoid such a thing, but I'd been very busy lately, so I assumed I'd neglected it the last time -- thus, I was cussing at myself for creating a new problem with my previous neglect. I grabbed the vacuum cleaner, attached the hose and did my best to clean out the lint trap before starting the dryer anew. I then left for the basketball game.
Later that night, as I was just about to drift away on a cloud of much needed sleep, suddenly there arose a tremendous ruckus in my daughter's bedroom, which is adjacent to mine. The cat will often decide to do his aerobic exercises late at night, so I initially was simply annoyed at the noise he was making. Then my daughter started yelling, "Cat! Cat!" (When we get mad at him, we forget he has an actual name -- it's akin to using that dreaded middle name when scolding a child.)
Those yells quickly turned to cries of help directed to me that went something like this: "Mom! Mom! Blackjack (the cat's real name) has a mouse! Mom! Mooooooooommmmmmmm!"
By then, the ruckus had passed by my closed door, which I threw open while emitting more curses. I turned on the hallway light, but the cat was not to be seen. My daughter then informed me that she had turned on her lamp when the cat's noise had become too much, and she had seen him with something in his mouth, and that thing had squeaked! Then he had dropped the thing, which she immediately saw was a mouse, and that mouse had taken off down the hallway with the cat in hot pursuit.
At this moment, I was more annoyed than anything. I was really tired, yet I was certain that the cat would take care of the mouse -- despite this being his first ever encounter with one. I ambled down the hallway, turning on lights as I went. At first, I couldn't find either of them, and then I spotted them in the formal living room, and it was then that I knew I had a problem.
Basically, the mouse had the cat cornered, so to speak. The cat was under my grandmother's old rocking chair peering out at the mouse who was simply crouched on the carpet looking back at the cat, and I could have sworn that damn mouse was taunting the cat with a "come-n'get-me" little twitch of his tail. I sighed and tried to urge the cat to do what was supposed to be in his nature to do, but apparently you can't coach a stupid cat.
The mouse suddenly bolted. The cat leaped, and he caught the mouse up into his mouth. I was both happy about this and frustrated because I didn't really want to watch him kill a mouse or eat it or dismember it or any other nasty thing like that, but I also wanted him to take care of the mouse. I stepped into the kitchen for one brief moment to look for something to try to catch the mouse in, but when I turned back to check on the cat and the mouse, I only saw the cat.
No mouse. Anywhere. Just a dumb cat looking up at me with a puzzled expression.
I looked down at him and considered: Either that was the fastest disposal of a mouse in the history of cat-eat-mouse stories, or the cat had let the mouse go -- again. I assumed the latter, and I began a search of the premises while the stupid cat looked on in idle curiosity.
After about twenty minutes of searching, I gave up for the night. I was really beginning to think that the cat had swallowed the mouse whole in the few seconds my back was turned, but mostly I was too tired to continue searching. I put out some sticky mouse traps and went to bed. I thought that I'd surely catch the mouse in one of the many traps by morning.
I awoke the next day, a Tuesday, and checked the traps. No mouse. Then I began to wonder if the cat had injured the mouse enough that it had crawled off somewhere to hole up in my house to nurse its wounds or to die. I didn't have a lot of time to worry about it at the moment because I had to get to work. I truly believed that I'd find it in a trap after work because years ago (pre-cat) when a mouse had violated my house, that was exactly what had happened -- a full day away from home had brought the mouse out and into a trap. It was then that the events of the day before concerning the dryer came rushing back, and I knew exactly how the little bugger had come into my house -- the dryer vent.
It had happened that way years ago during a bad cold spell, and we'd been having one of the worst cold spells I can ever remember this past month. The mouse back then had climbed through the dryer vent slats outside, along the metal tubing and then chewed a hole through the hose behind the dryer. That explained the noise when I'd started the dryer the evening before. It wasn't lint I'd neglected to clean as I'd first imagined; it was the mouse's nest, and when I'd then run the dryer, the mouse had chewed his way out of the hose rather than go back the way he came and simply vacate my home. Sure enough, when my father came over to help me move the dryer to attend to the situation, we found a huge hole in the hose and the rest of the lint he'd used to make his nest.
Unfortunately, when I returned from work, still no mouse. I was then feeling more certain that he'd gone off and died somewhere in my home from the wounds inflicted by the cat, so I started looking under things, but I have a lot of possible places in my home where a small mouse could hide, so I gave up on that. I knew that if he really was dead somewhere, I'd smell him soon.
That night I had to drive to another town somewhat distant where my son is assistant basketball coach at a high school for the Parents' Night ceremonies there. I returned quite late, checked the traps, and shook my head in frustration when I saw that they were still empty.
I allowed the cat to sleep on my bed that night -- something I rarely do since I actually am allergic to him and he's actually my daughter's pet and not mine. He prefers to sleep on my bed, though, and I thought that if the mouse were still around, maybe he'd awaken me during the night, so I could take care of it once and for all. However, the night passed without any ruckus.
On Wednesday, I awoke and was surprised to not see the cat still curled up at the foot of my bed. I stumbled into the bathroom and flicked on the light. There was the cat . . . sitting on my toilet.
He had the strangest look on his face, and I immediately knew that the mouse was somewhere nearby. I began searching for it, making a lot of ruckus myself in an attempt to flush it out if it were still alive. I opened the drawers and doors of the bathroom vanity, I picked up a towel that was lying on the floor and shook it vigorously, I looked behind the toilet, I opened the shower curtain from both directions and peered into the tub, and then I repeated the process. No mouse.
By then, I was running late. I climbed into the shower. I shampooed. I rinsed. I put conditioner in my hair. Then the washcloth I keep on the edge of the tub to wipe down the shower afterwards slid to the floor of the tub at my feet.
This has happened before, so I wasn't surprised when it did. I simply bent to pick it up before it got wet. That's when the mouse ran out from under the washcloth.
Fortunately, it ran away from my feet, but it couldn't scramble up the sloped and slippery sides of the tub, so as it proceeded to try to escape the shower it was now receiving, this is basically the thought processes I had in a time span of 2-3 seconds: The mouse is in the shower with me. There is the mouse. I hate that fucking cat. What the hell do I do now? I'm naked and wet in the shower with a mouse! At that point I screamed. Don't ask me why, but I did. I was well aware that the mouse was in my house, and I was well aware that he was now in the shower with me, yet I still screamed. Jeez. Sometimes I embarrass myself.
I turned off the water, hopped out, wrapped my robe around me, pulled the shower curtain out of the tub so he couldn't latch on and somehow get himself out of the tub, and then I went in search of that damn cat!
In fact, my search went something like this: "Where's the damn cat?!" I repeated this until I found him sitting innocently on the back of the couch looking at me like he couldn't possibly imagine what my problem was. I scooped him up, took him to my bathroom, set him on the toilet where he'd been sitting earlier and pointed at the mouse. He proceeded to watch as if he were viewing a lively tennis match from above.
In fury, I scooped him up again and yelled repeatedly, "You're worthless, cat! Worthless!" I then stormed into my daughter's room, turned on her light -- eliciting a momentary complaint from her since she was still in bed -- and shouted, "Where's that damn box?" I was referring to the shoe box which had contained the dress shoes I'd recently purchased for her to wear to speech meets and which I knew was still sitting in her room.
I grabbed the box and returned to the bathroom where the mouse was still attempting to free himself from my tub. I set the box sideways in the tub, and the mouse climbed right into it. It had a hinged lid, which I immediately slammed shut, and then I didn't know what to do with the mouse. I knew I was really running late for work by then, and I still needed to finish my shower. Despite the hassle the mouse had caused, I don't have it in me to cold-bloodedly kill a creature, but I really didn't know what to do.
The cat had already proved his worthlessness at disposing of rodents, so with box in hand and still clutching my robe shut, I strode to the front door, wrenched it open and then I threw the box with the mouse still inside out into the yard. It landed upside down on the sidewalk. I figured I'd check on it when I left the house.
I finished my shower, got ready quickly, and we all left the house. I walked down the sidewalk, approaching the shoe box. It was then I noticed that the mouse's release to freedom hadn't lasted. Since he'd been soaking wet from my shower when I tossed him and the box out my front door, he'd frozen to death immediately after crawling out of the small hole on the side of the box.
The cat couldn't kill him. I couldn't kill him. But Old Man Winter -- he certainly could.
