Dreadful Nonsense

I was sitting on my bed this morning, minding my own business, pretending to study but really watching the Sharon Osbourne show on Sky (I now truly understand why it has been cancelled). Smudge, our white, elderly and remarkably skinny cat was curled up beside me, as she likes to help me pretend to study but really watch tv by sitting on whatever books or notepaper I have so that I can't read it for very long.

So there we were, sitting, purring and watching tv when out of the air vent above the tv popped a little brown head. A little brown head that belonged to a little brown mouse. The mouse sniffed the air, walked along the air vent a little bit, sniffed the air again and then looked directly at me and the cat. The cat perked her head up slightly, sniffed the air back, and decided that she really couldn't be bothered, and put her head back down on to chapter one of Exploring Psychology. I remained entirely motionless and stared at the mouse. The mouse walked along the air vent a little more and then disappeared.

I started giggling.

I knew we had mice - we've had mice in the house since I moved back in November. But they've been unvisible mice, mice that were acknowledged only by the minor damage that they would do to packets of dog food or bird food left irresponsibly in drawers that had holes in the back of them, or out of mouse proof containers. These mice were easy to ignore, thanks to them being clever enough to stay out of the way of the dogs, cats and people that live in the house with them.

Apparently, though, the mice have worked out that our animals don't give a damn about what they do and where they do it, cos the mice are breaking through and planning a party. It might be my bad housekeeping over the last four weeks while the parents have been on holiday, it might be that they've been sticking their heads out of air vents for the last three months and I haven't noticed before now, it might be that they've brokered a secret pact with the cats in exchange for eating through the cardboard that holds the cat biscuits - who knows what kind of evil plans these mouse overlords have?

I did what every responsible housekeeper would do when faced with a mouse: I rang my mother.

She said vague things about traps and poison, things I immediately forgot that she said, as I am a vegetarian and cannot condone that kind of mouse genocide. But if I don't know it's happening, I can be happy in my mouse-free ignorance.

In the meantime, because Mum isn't back until Saturday and I'm freaking out about mice crawling out of the air vent while I'm asleep and nibbling at my toes, I've decided to call my mouse visitor 'Toby' after the lovable serial killer in Hollyoaks who Susan walked past this evening in London Village. If you put a familiar face upon your nightmare, or so the theory goes, then the nightmare won't have such a hold over you and you can sleep easy without dreaming that you are part of one of the ridiculously irresponsible Bush Tucker Trial things off of IACGMOOH.

Now excuse me. I'm off to stick newspapers into the air vent in my room while shrieking in the manner of a lady in a 1930s cartoon.

This entry was posted on 10 February 2004 at 7:18 pm. 0 comments

Dreadful Nonsense

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