So last night The Lovely Rhonda and I had just settled down and were just barely drifty-snoozy sleeping when one of the cats came loping into the bedroom and commenced with yowling and murping very strangely.
We have three cats: Grandpa, Won-Won, and Hermione. We got Grandpa (original name: Tank) and Won-Won (original name: Heals, also known as Healsy, Mr. Stupid-Head, and Get Off Me You #$%@ing Cat) as kittens from the Humane Society, while Hermione (no nickname other than Oh For God’s Sake SHUT UP) came to us full-grown from one of those adopt-a-cat things at the PetSmartCo. Grandpa has turned out to be a hunter of birds and has at least three confirmed kills under his collar this spring alone. Hermione doesn’t get out much; she was a shelter cat her whole two years of life before coming to us and while she sort of knows how to manipulate the dog-door (not the adorable cat-flap I wish we had, for literary purposes, but the very pedestrian dog-door) she doesn’t venture out for long before returning to the house for her domestic and sanitation needs. So if she is a hunter, it must be of household bugs.
In which case The Lovely Rhonda might have a word with her later, as we have some pesky ants in the kitchen.
At any rate, I thought all the commotion last night was just Hermione being herself, until TLR, who has significantly better vision than I do at night (which is to say, she can see whereas I am blind like the bat) began to say OH NO YOU DIH-UNT. What’s going on? I ask, and she says, YOUR CAT brought in little dead thing only it isn’t quite dead and now it’s under YOUR dresser.
So, being as I am the designated killer of spiders and so forth, I got up and turned on a light and put my spectacles on, and there it was. Only it was dead, and it was only in front of my dresser. Thank Ipthar.
I went and got a paper towel and (because I am a nurse, albeit merely a psych nurse) some gloves, and I returned to pick up the remains of the largest mouse I have ever seen. Or possibly it was a juvenile rat. It was not one of those tiny, adorable house-mice you see sometimes; no, this was a sleek, robust specimen of rodent manliness. I disposed of our houseguest and fortunately the cat took his crazy, wild-eyed predatory self outside for further stalking of the local wildlife. He is a very affectionate cat and I did not want him to try to rub his face all over mine in case it still had fresh mouse goobers all over it.
Today he slept all day on a dining room chair, exhausted from his victorious night of vermin-massacre. It’s good to be the cat.