Suzy Says

Snow kitten, February 26, 2011

On Wednesday night, the kittens woke me up around 3:00, racing around like mad and knocking things over downstairs. I went to investigate. Audrey stayed at the top of the stairs, glowering. Maybe she was woken up from her beauty sleep, too.

I went into the bathroom and discovered one of the kittens with a mouse in his mouth. Remarkably, after all these months, I have a hard time telling them apart. Basically, if I can’t see Clyde’s little white bowtie, I’m at a loss, even though Roscoe is slightly bigger and Clyde has slightly longer fur.

I shooed whoever it was out of the bathroom, reflecting on how far I’ve come in the year I’ve lived here. The sight of the mouse didn’t even make me scream. On the other hand, the fact that it was 3:00 am and I couldn’t shoo them outside means that there’s a dead mouse in the house somewhere. I’ll probably find it by the smell in a few days. Oh, well.

Later on, when the sun came up and got to work, it was warm enough to have the door open a little to let in the spring-y air. I might be imagining it, but it seems to me that the birds sound a little louder lately. One of the kittens (again unidentifiable) came racing through the door with a bird in his mouth. I hate it when they kill birds. This time, I chased the little murderer outside and shut the door on him.

I’ve been lucky so far that they haven’t dropped their victims on the bed (or on me, for that matter). Yesterday, Megan told me that when Rob had his first spinal surgery and was lying helpless in bed, their cat, the beautiful Harriet*, clearly thinking that Rob was too infirm to feed himself, brought him a mouse and dropped it on his chest. The mouse scurried all over Rob’s body. Harriet decided that Rob wasn’t well enough to kill his own mouse, either, so she did it herself and gave it to him again. Rob had to get Megan to remove Harriet’s gift.

So it could have been worse. And speaking of mice: last week, I noticed a mouse trap on my co-worker’s desk. I asked her if she’d ever caught one. “Oh, yes!” she laughed. “There’s mice poop everywhere!”

Now they tell me. At next week’s staff meeting, I’m voting for an Official Office Cat.

*Harriet is acting as if nothing happened to her leg. It looks funny, but she’s doing fine with it. It’s amazing how animals adapt. The other day, I met a three-legged dog who ran and walked as if she had all four. I didn’t even notice at first.