Dreadful Nonsense

Late last night I was wandering around the house on the cordless phone, minding my own business and chatting away inanely at Susan, which is my nightly habit. I walked in to the sitting room, and noticed that Anarchy (our tortoise shell, lazy, fat and over indulged cat) was playing with a bit of fluff under the dining room table. I decided to ignore this - he often has a brief fit of energy, from which he is soon overcome by a considerably longer fit of laziness.

However, after about 2 minutes in the room with him, I noticed his chirruping was getting louder. If you have cats - and really, you should - you'll know that when they're hunting, even play hunting, they make strange bird-like noises that are kind of like an extreme version of purring. Anarchy only makes this noise when he's about to jump on a dog or the other cat, and so I started to pay more attention in case he was about to start bullying Honey again - she's very old and can't really ward him off when he's being a git.

It was only then that I noticed the little idiot was playing with a mouse.

A mouse. In our sitting room.

I freaked out. I screamed his name a couple of times in an attempt to get him to drop it, but that didn't work. (Can you imagine how it sounds to the neighbours or anyone walking by at about 11pm to hear a hysterical cry of "ANAARCHYYY!!!" coming from our front room?). I hung up on Susan and did what any right thinking animal liberalist would do when faced with such a dilemma - I phoned my Mum. My Mum didn't answer. I phoned my Dad. My Dad didn't answer. I phoned my Mum again and left a message. Then I phoned my sister.

At this point, Anarchy had retreated to behind a little table beside the sofa. Louise answered the phone in a pub and proceeded to laugh hysterically when I told her what was wrong. She told me to get a plastic bag, and said I had to get the mouse away from Anarchy and pick it up and put it outside. And then carried on laughing.

I ran to the kitchen, got the bag, came back inside, at this point giggling hysterically along with Louise while chastising her terribly that she wasn't treating the situation with the gravity it deserved. Anarchy dropped the mouse and retreated a few steps, perhaps wisely reading my state of mind through the sound of frenzied laughing.

After that it was a case of crouching over the now lifeless mouse, which was lying in a fetal position under one of the table legs, and slowly moving my plastic-bag-covered hand to and from it, while I tried to come to terms with having to touch the damn thing. When I did, it was still warm (obviously) and that freaked me out even more. Anarchy continued to stare at me in that horrible detached manner that cats affect, and I took the poor little relative of Toby the Air Vent Mouse and laid it to rest in it's final resting place of our bin, which the bin men will be picking up tomorrow.

Now, as if that trauma wasn't enough for me to cope with, last night was filled with dreams of mice, much like the dreams Richard Herring experienced in Fist of Fun after he had killed all the mice in his flat with poison. Except - and this is important - I didn't kill the damn mouse.

Today, I found some mouse droppings on my duvet cover. Tonight I will be sleeping in the bath.

This entry was posted on 12 February 2004 at 7:29 pm. 0 comments

Dreadful Nonsense

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