The Boy has gone to Indianapolis. I have so much attention from Kitten Thunder it’s almost annoying. Right now, Obi is rolling on his back on the desk. Under the monitor shelf. There goes a pencil. And a pen. And a CD. Plus, there’s a big furry tail on my keyboard.
As I was typing the last paragraph, Obi sat up and started swatting at my mouse. He is horribly affronted by my “no!” as I placed the mouse in my lap.
In other news, Mr. Bear made it out to the living room last night but tonight when I got home he was back in the hall. I can only assume he saw whatever show he needed to see on TV and is working his way back to the office.
This week in the blogoverse, Aluminum Foiled My Plans had a post about her cat and a mouse. And so, the story of Poco, Oli and the mouse:
As I’ve said before, Oliver had to be bottle fed when he first came to live with Poco and I. Since moving to Cheyenne Poco had become an indoor cat but I let her go “out” in the garage. One morning I let her “out” and sat down on the couch with Oliver and his bottle.
A few minutes into his feeding, Poco walked into the living room and came straight to us. She gave us a look like, “well, if he’s staying we mights as well see what the kid’s got.” Then she dropped a mouse at my feet.
**We break in to this story to talk briefly about the mice of Wyoming. Evidently, elsewhere, mice are huge. Here they are about the same size as a toy mousie and very cute. Not that that makes it okay for your cat to bring one into the living room. Back to the story.**
I had a kitten and a bottle and I was struggling to get them set down so I could deal with the mouse situation. Poco knew the look on my face and grabbed the mouse before I could take away her prize. I snatched her up and carried her out onto my front sidewalk.
There, we did the shake. Not much to explain really, I leaned over so Po was almost on the ground while growling, “drop it. DROP it. Drop IT.” She growled back and held on. But eventually the mouse fell to the ground. I am a very persistent shaker – Stoney and I used to argue for hours about whether he was going to eat a bird or whether I was going to take the carcass to my art professor for extra credit. I reeeeally like getting A’s.
The mouse, a little soggy from his ride in a kitten mouth, opened an eye. He twitched his whiskers. One arm moved. His tail flicked. After several minutes it seemed to dawn on him that – against all odds – he was alive. Alive! And then he was off, down the driveway and across the street.
This is when I realized I was standing in the middle of my front yard in a strappy little satin nighty.
Stupid cat.
Kitten Thunder: Life lessons and cat tales 
Ahahah! They sure do love to attract our attention, I no longer tell Kit off when she brings one home…mainly because she’d also sussed my “mouse face” and would do a runner with it. If however I act like she’s done something wonderful I get access to the mousie! A week ago I even used a decoy mouse (the dead one from the night before) and in an act of stealth and wonderness threw it down the garden while the cats pursued and I rescued the poor little live mouse from my at my feet. Subterfuge, cat style. I do have to make a big deal about throwing and dead mice away and the cats witnessing the dead mouse hit the garbage or they spend the next eight hours trying to find it…dumb animals. (Thanks for the shout-out 🙂 )
Two things — one, how do you get extra credit by giving your teacher a dead bird? All I got was a restraining order…
and two — Holly, WHY ARE YOU KEEPING THE DEAD MOUSE FROM LAST NIGHT??? Are you a dead mouse Hoarder?
I was an art major and my professor was doing a series of paintings where she used dead birds as stamps. Very pretty, actually. Once she had me recover a bird that flew into our glass studio (I worked for the department), but she forgot to print with it for several days. When she finally used it she pressed down and all the guts squirted out its mouth and across the room. She looked at me. I looked at her. We blinked. “You can fire me,” I said, “‘cuz I am NOT cleaning that up.”
when I read “using dead birds as stamps,” my first thought was “The post office is gonna be PISSED!”
Your explanation of the teachers artwork? Its strangely disturbing. 🙂
@hoodyhoo… hahahah…. poor dead birds. hehehe