Danielle Blog

The cat, the mouse, the cup, and the spoon

It is now officially story time, ladies and gents! (complete with semi-cheesy photos to recreate the events)

…….

A couple of years ago, one winter night, my hubby (HB) was out of town.

When I became tired, instead of going back to our cold, lonely bed, I turned off the living room light, took off my glasses and laid down to sleep on the couch.

After a while, I started having dreams with strange squeaking noises, but being tired, I just ignored them, rolled over and went into a state of uneasy sleep.

Soon, the strange squeaking noises were accompanied by loud thumps. These were the types of thumps I usually associated with the pouncing of our 20 pound cat when she plays with her toys.

I squinted my eyes open and, sure enough, saw our cat pouncing on the floor and thought to myself, “Oh good, she made herself a squeaky toy.” Because, you see, she HAS NO squeaky toys, so she obviously made herself one.

“er? what?” you might be wondering.

Well, yes, that is what I thought too, about 20 seconds later; the fact that she couldn’t possibly have constructed a squeaky toy for herself permeated my sleep-befuddled brain, and I awoke with a start.

I open my eyes and stare through the semi-darkness afforded by the lights from our entertainment center. Sure enough she is pouncing with her legs all stiff and her back arched, and when she pounces, there is squeaking.

I grab my glasses.

She freezes, when she realizes I’m awake, and jumps back, probably thinking that she is in trouble. And I see the shadow of a small brown object run across the floor away from her and to the left.

“AAAAAAAAAAAGH! A mouse!”

I’m embarrassed to say that my immediate reaction was to jump up on our couch, just like some stupid, stereotypical woman afraid of a mouse.

“Okay. okay. okay,” I pant. “Where did it go? Where did it go Girlie-girl?” I ask her.
And Girlie-girl just looks at me like I’m speaking a foreign language.

I flip the light on. (Fortunately, I can reach it without getting down from the couch.)

“Okay. Okay. We can do this. Where did it go? Come on, show me where it went.”
And she just continues to stare at me.

After a few more moments of her staring at me like I’m nuts, and me trying to lean down off of the couch to see if I can tell where the mouse went, I decide that I’m going to have to get down off of the couch and look.

CRAP.

With my adrenaline at an all time high and my heart pounding, I get down on my hands and knees to look at the wall, toward which I last saw the mouse running. I realize that our hot water baseboard heater affords a perfect, dark hidey area for mice. yuck! I almost don’t want to look, but steel myself to look….

… and don’t see it.

Crap.

But she is still staring pretty intently at the heater. So, I ask her “Is the mouse in there? Come on, where’s the mouse? Get the mouse.”

Then I think “oh crap, what if it is inside the metal somehow. I wonder if I can even open it up to see.”

And I go to the end where there is this loose piece of metal and as I’m trying to flip it up the whole dang thing falls off and there is the mouse, perched on this hot water pipe staring up at me.

“CRAAAAAAAAAAAAP!”

And I jump back up on the couch, and furiously point and tell our cat to GET IT! GET IT!

And again, she stares at me like I’m nuts.

And the mouse stares at me.

CRAP!

“WHY ISN’T HB HERE!?”

What the heck am I going to do? I can’t just leave it there!… She clearly isn’t going to get it… We don’t have any traps in the house and I’m NOT leaving long enough to go out and get one and take the chance that it will get away.

Maybe I can catch it…. It is just kind of sitting there, after all.

Mice bite. I might not be afraid of all small furry animals, but mice, well they have a history of biting. So, If I’m going to catch it I need a long spoon or something and a bucket or something to scoop it into.

So, I run into the kitchen, and grab a big cup and a spoon. I run back, and our girlie-girl is still guarding the mouse (like a good girl.)

Then I steel my nerves, and think “okay, I’ve got to do it fast, before it realizes what I’m doing. Just like when you want to squish a bug, you do it fast…. OKay, I can do this.”

And I reach with the spoon

and flip it into the cup in one shot!

“HA! Take that!”

“I caught the mouse!”

“oh. I caught the mouse.”

“Now what the heck do I do with it?”

“You got any ideas?”

“crap. I can’t just kill it. I can’t even stand to squish bugs that crunch, there is no way I can kill a mouse. I know! I need an open field. Mice hate open fields. I’ll just put it in the center of the cul-de-sac and maybe some nice hawk or owl will see it and have a little late-night snack. That’s the ticket.”

So, I put it in the center of the cul-de-sac and it ran off toward the weeds and trees.

And I never saw that mouse again.

Or at least, I don’t think I saw that particular mouse again… but who knows? Maybe that was the same mouse that came back and bothered us later… or maybe a hawk or owl got to have a lil’ snack. That’s what I like to think happened.

The End

Final note: in order to do pictures that ‘recreate’ events, I used the Girlie-girl’s toy mouse and took the pics during the day, instead of in the dim lighting of night. And this really did happen as described. I think the mouse was easier to catch, because Girlie-girl had weakened it with her pouncing… that and it wasn’t expecting to be caught by a cup and a spoon.