Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, Not a creature was stirring but Caroline’s mouse.
In other words, my parent’s “cat” decided to get in on the gift-giving action this year.
See, my parents have two pets: a sweet and enthusiastic English cocker spaniel, and a psychotic cat who is approximately the same size as the dog. Most of the time, Toby (the cat) comes across as sweet: he cuddles, he purrs, he has retained his kittenish habit of suckling his own shoulder when he is especially happy, and he loves to stretch out on his back and beg for a belly-rub.
The trick is this: if you actually touch his belly, he will maim you.
And then there’s what he does if you’re not six times his size. See, when he was about three months old, he began going outside. We watched him at first, but when he seemed to have the hang of the cat door, we let him roam free, and we have regretted it for years, because one of the first things he did was bring in the leg of a rabbit.
“Roadkill,” my mother declared authoritatively. “Something else killed it, and it decomposed for a while; there’s no other way. He’s just too tiny.” And over the next few days, as he brought in rabbit pieces one by one, we prayed that she was right.
The years of headless (or bodiless) mice and birds that followed, along with the occasional live chipmunk and unidentifiable bit of who-knows-what have strained our optimism just a bit, but the fact remains that the cat is just adorable (even if it is clearly not all domestic medium-hair).
Until, that is, Christmas Eve, when I started hearing rumors of a field mouse loose on the second floor. And, sure enough, the moment I turned out my light, I heard “Click click click click click click click. Click click click. Click click click click click click.” Switching the light back on, I peered over the edge of my bed just in time to see a tiny brown thing dart under my bed. It appeared again on the other side for a split second as I hopped off to go see my mother.
“Set Toby on it,” was her first suggestion. Then: “Just sleep in the other room.” Then: “Get out of my bed now.”
I tried to share a room with it. And failing that, I tried to scare it back out into the hallway. I kept the light on, I waved and yelled every time it stuck its head out from under various furnishings. The problem was that the mouse was a masochist. It refused to even stay on the other side of the room, and although it frequently ducked out into the quiet, dark, safe hall, it always poked its stupid little nose back in within a couple of minutes. The last straw came nearly an hour later, when the noise got louder, and I sat up just in time to see the thing running over the top of the overstuffed armchair in the corner.
In other words, it was at eye level.
My artful screams and carefully calibrated flailing frightened it off the chair and out the door, only to return 30 seconds later. Which was when I left.
The evening was not without Christmas cheer, though: early in the morning, my mother went downstairs to check on the dog. And she sort of saw Toby in the hall as she went by (noting as she did that my light was still on–I hadn’t wanted to flee across a dark room), and suspected something when he ignored her.
From one floor down, she heard bones crunching. And, when she came back up, there was no trace of the mouse.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!