Cat versus mouse

Now our cat Goofy is what you'd call a "Garfield" cat: fat, lazy, gets grumpy when he doesn't get his way, and if you don't get up early enough to feed him, you will get a surprise when you wake up with him on your chest and his butt in your face...but an overall good cat none the less. Though he is quite portly, he has been doing an amazing job ridding our house of rodent infestation, as well as being the "guard cat". He has been known to scream (yes, I've never EVER heard a cat make these sounds before) and throw himself against the front door if someone comes and neither me, or my sweetie Matt are around. With the weather changing, and the spring being full of twidderpated breeding, the creatures of the fields have decided to use our house as their love nest. We can hear them running around in the ceiling as we try to sleep, traps rarely do any good, seriously these are mice with heightened intelligence. They are the Albert Einstein's of the rodent world....until they try to mess with Goofy.

Now mind you, put Goofy in a box with a beetle (yes, we did this last year and it was hilarious), and he will bat at it once or twice, then turn and cower...looking at us to remove him from the box that has become a Thunderdome. Put him in the bathtub with a mouse, the mouse attacks the cat, and I go laughing my butt off almost soiling myself in the kitchen. But mess with Goofy's food? Not gonna happen! Hang out under the oven? He'll sit there for hours trying to psych the little pest from it's hiding. Which is where this story begins.

It's a normal day of cleaning the kitchen, sweeping up as much of the dog hair as best I can from our 2 garbage disposals pictured in the column to your right...I swear it's enough that I could crochet my own blanket if I knew how to spin the hair (someone teach me how...please!!!). The stove is notorious for being a collection dredge, so I try to sweep out as much as I can under there before getting the vacuum to finish the job. Unfortunately, the vacuum is out of order at the moment, so I just swept what I could, then went around my business. That's when Goofy showed up under my feet and was haunched down so he could monitor what had just taken place under the stove. Now mind you, I'm sure there was some more hair under there, but it was going to take some time before I could get it all. But he was persistent, looking this way and that, moving towards the stove, then moving away. I though he was just looking at the leftover hair thinking it was a fuzzy beast that he could pounce upon proudly to get his kitty treats (oh yes, he gets treats every time he catches one of these vermin).

10 minutes go by, 15 minutes...there had to be something under there, unless he was seriously losing it. I dismissed it as his own little kitty obsession, so I had turned on the oven to heat up some lunch. That's when the excitement started!!!

Next thing you know, a minute after the stove had started to heat up, I hear squeaking and turn around. Goofy is triumphantly sitting in the middle of the kitchen with a field mouse the size of my thumb, hanging out of his mouth. I kneel down and ask him to bring it to me, he runs away. I call Matt to help me, Goofy shuns him as well and start parading around the living room with his kill, all the while the mouse is still squeaking. Now mind you, Goofy does not want to kill it, he wants to play, and has been known to become overzealous with his trophy and then dropping it and watching it scurry away. I didn't want this to be one of those times.

He finally is coaxed back into the kitchen with the shaking of his kitty treat bag (oh yes, he is spoiled when he does his job) and suspiciously looks at me as I kneel before him. I do a trade: I put a few of the treats on the ground just as I grab the mouses tail as he begins to drop it for his tasty prize. Got it!!!

So the rodent is dealt with to be removed from the house, and I believe everything is okay. The mouse hunter is once again triumphant in his duties, and I go back to working on cleaning the dishes...until Matt tells me not to move. Apparently that wasn't the only rodent who had been under the stove. As I aimlessly had been working on the dishes, another mouse had finally come out of hiding under the now blazing stove, and Goofy again had been there in waiting. Unfortunately, I was going to now take part in this caper whether I liked it or not.

Goofy had spied the intruder in retreat, but had batted it rather than trying to catch it (looked like he was done with working for the day). When he had swatted the beast, unbenounced to me, it had landed on my shoe and had taken refuge beneath my sweatpants hem. Now my sweats are like yoga pants, they're bigger on the bottom, kinda flowy, and I love them! But, now I know they can be hiding places for mice as well. Matt tells me not to move, and that a mouse has just gone under my pants. I freeze, not feeling anything down there, and mind you I'm still facing the sink so I'm oblivious to what is going on behind me. I slowly raise my leg like a ballerina behind me towards where I believe Matt to be, and he grabs my leg, retrieves the freeloader, and again, we rid the house of unwanted house guests. Again, Goofy is spoiled with treats, I change my clothes instantly and throw them into the washing machine...hey, I was going to do laundry anyway...and scrubbed from my ankle to my knee until it was raw. Never a dull moment around here, I can tell you that!