Rusty 1 - Mouse 0

The nights have been warm, and I've let Rusty (our oldest cat) sleep out on the backyard deck. There is a comfy rattan sofa out there, as well as a lawn chair, so he has his choice of cozy cushions to dream on.

Last night, when I went out to the deck to put a few morsels of food in his dish (to hold his lion-sized appetite at bay till morning), I heard some noise in the bird-feeder. Birds don't eat after dark, so I knew the mouse was back. I don't know if it's the same mouse who keeps coming back to our bird-feeders at night, or maybe the first mouse has told his friends about the left-over birdseed. And no matter how little birdseed I put in the feeder every morning, the mouse always seems to come by for a night-time snack on whatever is left in there. I guess the birds don't believe in the "clean plate" rule.

I stood there on the deck and listened to the mouse. Too dark to see him, and I wasn't going to stroll out into the yard to see more closely (heaven knows what could be lurking in the dark grass... we have all sorts of bugs/ants/worms that thrive in this state).

I looked at Rusty. He was alert and listening, with his pudgy little whiskered face staring out into the dark yard. The last thing I said to Rusty last night was "There's a mouse out in the bird-feeder, Rusty. You are a cat. Don't you think you ought to do something?" Rusty didn't look at me... he never took his golden-eyed gaze away from the yard. Off to bed I went.

This morning, when I went into the backyard to feed Rusty and change the water in the bird-bath, what did I see? A mouse, very dead, near the door to the backyard screen-porch. And there was Rusty, sitting smugly on the cushions of the rattan sofa on the deck. If he could speak, he would've said "So there. You asked. I delivered."

I took the broom and the dustpan and swept the rigid mouse up quickly. AngelBoy (my fluffy, prissy middle cat) was already sniffing at the mouse and I didn't want him to pick it up. He spotted the mouse before I did, as soon as I let him out of the porch. Not that I thought he really would touch the mouse..... I do believe he's too prissy for that, but you never know. He is a cat, after all. (To that, AngelBoy would say "I am not merely a cat, I am King.")

As I swept up the mouse, I saw my husband through the window of the kitchen. I held up the dust-pan for him to see. I smiled at him through the glass. He made a face and I knew what he was thinking (How were you able to sweep that up?)

And that's exactly the question he asked me when I came back into the house. He reminded me that I can barely keep my composure when I see a spider, and there I was with a dead mouse in the dust-pan and a smile on my face.

Well, the mouse was dead. As in not moving. And if I didn't sweep it up as quickly as I did, AngelBoy might have picked it up and ran out into the yard with it. And AngelBoy likes to lick my hand when he wants to prove to me that he can be a loving cat as well as an aloof cat. So the thought of AngelBoy's tiny mouse-furry tongue possibly touching my hand was all the incentive I needed to get that dead mouse out of the yard.

Besides, as I swept up the mouse, I sang to myself: "M - I - C........ K - E - Y....." -- just that put everything into a different perspective.