Oh dear! I was chatting about my cat to a friend this afternoon, and made the comment that Sylvester was too old and fat to succeed in catching anything other than the bowl of catfood I give him.
Obviously he heard me... this evening I was presented with my very own mouse, and it wasn't even chewed yet. Sylvester obviously felt that I ought to be given lessons in mouse-hunting, because the rodent was still alive, though petrified into immobility. Every few seconds Sylvester would bat the mouse with his paw until it moved, and then put his paw firmly on the mouse's tail to stop it getting away.
Working on the theory that eventually the mouse would make a break for it, and its little mouse-corpse would stink the flat out from behind the fridge, I retrieved the rodent and threw it back out into the garden. Hopefully it's a one-off.
Unfortunately last year Sylvester made a habit of bringing me little presents (although it was earlier in the year, which is why I thought I'd escaped - and so had the mice) many of which were partially chewed. This isn't so bad when you first get given them, but is rather less than pleasant when you wake up in the morning and step in the remains of one which you had been presented with when asleep!
The worst moment was when I rescued one mouse which was being used as a demo. I retrieved it from under Sylvester's paw, but then it bit me before I could pick it up by the tail (mice seem to have a reflex which makes them "freeze" if you pick them up by the tail; I think their mothers carry them like this. Rats on the other hand do not have this reflex, and have been known to shed their tail casings)
So I have to wait and see whether we now have declared open season on mice...
4 comments:
Of topic - but you are among my favourite blogs - see below:
http://inhocsigno.blogspot.com/2006/08/these-are-few-of-my-favourite-blogs.html
God bless!
Thanks for the encouragement, Paulinus. Good luck with the research.
Mac, I read somewhere that if you throw mice into the garden, they simply make their way back into the house. But maybe this one has enough brain-capacity to realise that meeting Sylvester again would be a BAD IDEA.
Thanks for the advice, Fr Tim, but I doubt that this mouse will be making a reappearance...
...firstly, Sylvester brought him in rather than the mouse finding his own way to the flat.
Secondly, the catflap is actually over a metre up (there is a little ledge for Sylvester to jump onto) and then the kamikaze mouse, having ignored the smell of cat, would have to push open the very heavy door on the catflap...
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