On a recent Friday evening, I heard rustling, a game of cat and mouse. The cat was playing; the mouse wasn’t nearly as excited about it.
Our remaining cat, Stormy, entered the living room from the hallway with a mouse in her mouth. Initially, I didn’t know if the mouse was alive or not. Eventually, Stormy got bored with holding it in her mouth, let it drop, and the mouse started to run away. Stormy quickly caught it.
The scene repeats a few more times as the mouse scurries into the dining room. Some boxes on the floor stifle Stormy, but I move them, and Stormy snares her prey. Finally, after releasing the mouse again, Stormy can’t quite get to it because it’s hidden between returnable bottles on the floor. I move the bottles, but the mouse moves underneath a tool chest; I don’t know how it fit under there.
Goodbye
The mouse was lying on its back, so I got a pair of winter gloves and picked it up. It was still moving but not nearly as robustly as before. I took the mouse outside, probably to meet its fate via an outside cat or a raptor.
Midnight and Stormy were inside cats and didn’t have the killer instinct. But they did have the play instinct. Earlier this year, we discovered a dead mole at the top of our steps. Even then, we were sure the cats didn’t kill the rodent but found the deceased creature.
Stormy is a great alarm clock for these things. One time, about a decade ago, she was staring at the brick wall above a fireplace, and we discovered that a bat was hanging there. We managed to get the bat out of the house without hurting the bat or us, but it was only because Stormy was so intent on staring that we even discovered the creature.
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