Of Mice, Men and Cats

Beloved childhood companion, Mimi

I live with a cat. I don't say I keep a cat. It shares my house in much the same way that weeds grow in my garden, or spiders hunt in my hallway. Elsewhere it's often considered an odd custom, living with animals. In most other cultures, it'd be not only unclean or unseemly, but downright eccentric. I often ask myself why I do it.

I respect animals, so much so that I became a vegetarian. And yet I live with an extremely nasty predator. It not only kills innocent lifeforms unnecessarily, it does so with truly astonishing cruelty. It taunts its prey and keeps it alive for as long as feline-ly possible, torturing and terrorizing its hapless victims.

How I could tolerate living with such a beast is, well, now no longer entirely beyond me.

On a hot summer evening several years ago, I returned to my flat, hungry and tired, looking forward to a nice quick meal. I opened my crate of instant noodles, took out a package and, lo and behold, it was empty. In fact, I found that all of the packets were empty. Mice had eaten them. Every one, and not even a crumb was left. Oh well, I thought, and reached for the cookies... which were gone, too. And the bagels. My foodstores had been completely cleaned out.

Over the next several days, I tried increasingly ingenious methods to secure my food from small mouths, all to no avail. What was worse, the mice then became brazen.

They interrupted my sleep; from their portal in my bedroom, I could hear them noisily sallying forth on their foraging expeditions. In my half-dreaming state, I heard mouse generals squealing orders to their numberless minions. On bathroom trips I frequently stumbled into their reconnaissance scouts in moments when they were careless and I was half asleep. The pantry raids were one thing, but sleep disruptions were an entirely different offense. Retaliation was necessary.

I tried live traps. Then, when that resulted in fiasco, I tried leaving out bitter food. I discovered that mice like bitter food. Sprays, noise, and lights were ineffective. I closed all conceivable mouse entrances. They became ever more contemptuous of me, venturing out in broad daylight. After weeks of lost sleep, I despaired.

I went beyond simple desperation and found myself in the country of those who have ceased to be rational human beings.

Those mice had to be taught a lesson.

One night, on schedule, I heard the now-familiar scratching. At first it was by the bookshelf, then my desk, and, after several minutes, it was coming from the waste basket. With a maniacal gleam in my eye, I moved more silently than any human ever has. With unprecedented grace I planted myself on the floor and waited in the dark. My ears were radar telescopes, prying information about my furry foe from the air. Like a hunter I tracked its every movement. I waited patiently, sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor, for hours. I held the large cardboard box I had specially procured for just this purpose and listened as the mouse made its way behind my desk.

Here was the only exposed part of the migration route, the metre between the desk and my bookshelf. It had to run across this highway of peril to get home. Hah! I knew, with a crazed certainty, that the mouse could not possibly escape me.

I planted the box down directly in the mouse's path. I was supremely calm. My patience was absolutely unbreakable, honed by the memory of many hours of lost sleep and vengeance-demanding vanished food. I was sure that the mouse knew I was there, in the room, watching it, hunting it. I could somehow sense its knowledge of me, the Great Predator.

It waited at the corner of my desk for an eternity, until at last I saw it in the darkness. The mouse poked out its tiny head, looked directly at me, and tore across the open space, mocking me as it ran.

Heh. I'll never forget that sound. It smacked into the cardboard with an immensely pleasing thud and lay stunned for the precious moment I needed. I up-ended the box, turned on the lights, and stared gleefully at my captive. The mouse blinked up at me in startled shock and, realizing its mistake, panicked. I laughed a laugh of insane release. I taunted it, poked at it, cajoled it, cursed it. I gloated over my triumph. I plotted parades of my prisoner, demonstrations to all of the other members of the resident mouse clan. Alas, arrogance.

The tiny acrobat leapt straight up half a metre into the air, turned, moved horizontally (I'm almost sure of this) and landed on my leg. Pausing, it jumped down and casually-- yes, casually-- sauntered back to its haven behind my bookshelf as I sat stunned in frozen astonishment.

It took me several moments to pull myself together enough to lie down gingerly on my bed, absorbing my lesson in humility.

The cat's eyes flick open occasionally, relentlessly tracing the movement of every object in the room, its keen predator's instincts honed and well-exercised. Its tail is twitching, and its focused mind is thinking about something I probably don't want to know about. It's likely remembering the tiny, furry fellow denizen that it gored yesterday. I know the hypocrisy of my choice, living with a cat. I live with a vicious predator because I don't have the stomach to kill mice myself. In effect, I've hired an assassin.

But I don't lose nearly as much sleep.