There's A Mouse In My House (or at least there was)

NOTE:  This is not an original post.  I originally posted it a couple of years ago to another blog I was writing at that time.  I have made a few minor alterations, but my apologies to those of you who have already read it.

There's a mouse in my house.  Or at least there was.  I think ...

Ok, that's a lie.  I know there was, almost beyond a shadow of a doubt. I just don't want to believe it.  Unfortunately, I don't have much choice.  Consider the evidence ... 

Picture it:  my house ... about 7:00 am EST, one week ago. I stumbled, bleary-eyed, out of bed, down the hall and into my dining room, en route to the kitchen to serve breakfast to the fur people, who were alternately capering ahead of and/or behind me, or twining enthusiastically around my ankles in anticipation of their morning repast.  Whereupon, to my profound dismay, my bare foot encountered something squishy and unidentifiably disgusting, but thankfully no longer warm, where it had expected to find only the same smooth, aged heart of pine floor I traverse each and every day of my life. 

I let loose with a distinctly high-school-girlish shriek, jumped sideways, and landed on one of The Diva's snow white paws, which she, incidentally, did not in the least appreciate, but which was helpful to me as the bone-piercing yowl said indignity elicited from Her Royal Caliconess aided in bringing me more fully to consciousness, and flicked on the light in the dining room.  Peering down through eyes that were still sleepy but now wide open in shock and the anticipation of horror, I spied what at first looked to be a very long, rather thick, lizard tail and the much-masticated remains of a lizard-ly lower torso.  

Initially, I relaxed, albeit marginally.  Stepping in lizard guts before I'd even had my first cup of coffee is not exactly my idea of living the dream, but I could deal.  Being the utterly fearless, bad-a$$ that I am, I reached down, grasped the end of the alleged lizard tail, and peered closely at it.  Still battling the effects of the previous day's sixteen hour workday, I at first did not trust what my tired eyes were telling me, and so did an about-face back into the hall to look more closely at what I was grasping under the strong lights in my bathroom.  This is where it all fell apart.

Because in the harsh fluorescent lights of said bathroom, it quickly became all too clear that what I was holding, IN MY BARE HAND I MIGHT ADD, was not a disembodied lizard tail, but rather the tail of a mouse, and that what was attached to that tail were the gruesome remains of said mouse's lower torso and its left hind leg and foot.  

Quicker than you can utter a string of words all approximately four letters long, I had, acting purely on instinct, flushed what remained of the sad little corpse down the toilet, then proceeded to gag into the sink and spend the next twenty minutes washing my hands under water so hot that it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that for the rest of that day I went around sporting first degree burns on hands that, previously sorely in need of a manicure, were now sore in a more literal sense of the word.  All I can say is, it is for precisely situations like these that the acronym FML was coined.

Also, in case you were wondering, my day did not improve one iota for the remainder of that 24 hour period, though it did not, fortunately, get any worse.  Although, let's face it.  Stepping in the remains of a dearly departed rodent, and then grasping said remains in one's bare hand all while scarcely awake and ambulatory is pretty hard to top!

Now for the back story.  A few days prior, I had rather absentmindedly noticed that The Baby had developed an apparent obsession with the lower kitchen cabinet to the direct left of the sink, which he has not showed the least bit of interest in for the entire almost two years he's been with me.

  

His new obsession was a surprise, as this cabinet is a seldom-used storage space that plays host to extra rolls of paper towels, assorted serving platters, and other kitchen miscellany.  In other words, it is not routinely used to store anything he would find interesting, i.e. food, treats, or anything even remotely edible. Therefore, it should have clued me in to the fact that something was not as it should be when he took to standing sentry beside it for long stretches of time with all his faculties avidly attuned to something I could not see or hear.

More back story:  I live in the Soho area of South Tampa, a block or so off the water in an area that, due to its close proximity to the water as well as its many historic homes, is known to have issues with mice, as well as their more insidious cousins, rats.  I have lived in my house for five years and never had any problems with them myself, but more than once I have been walking with the dogs along Bayshore Boulevard, a long, winding necklace of prime waterfront strung with the pearls of high end real estate valued in most cases in the multi-millions of dollars ... FYI - in case you were wondering, NO, my mouse-house is not one of these - and stumbled upon the toes-up corpse of one species of rodent or other, so it really should have dawned on me that The Baby's sudden and nigh-to-rabid preoccupation with a seemingly innocent kitchen cabinet spelled trouble.  

Alas, it did not.  And I have paid, and dearly, for not according due attention to what my little house panther's unusual behavior should have been telling me, especially when considering that my next door neighbors, who recently moved out of state and put their as-yet-unsold house on the market, were of the, if you'll pardon the pun, pack-ratly persuasion, and I find it very plausible that in the packing up of the worldly belongings stored in their garage, they may have unwittingly disturbed a rodent domicile or two in the process.

All of this is bad enough.  But as the saying goes ... where there is one, there are likely more.  Which makes me wonder if there are other cousins of the unfortunate mouse dispatched so efficiently, albeit cold-bloodedly, by The Baby, lurking in the cabinet by the sink, or elsewhere in my house.  I have not seen any signs of this, but I have nonetheless contacted an exterminator to come out so I can be reassured (or horrified) by a professional assessment of the situation.  I also have to face the almost certain reality that my sweet little kitten not only killed, but also consumed, the unfortunate rodent.  

In the initial aftermath, I was not altogether sure what I feared more ... that The Baby had consumed the mouse, or that he hadn't.  After cautiously pulling back my bedclothes, peering  under the bed, and searching various other places throughout the house for any additional pieces of this disturbing puzzle, all the while in fear that my explorations were a Whatever Happened to Baby Jane moment in the making, I was forced to accept the fact that The Baby had dispatched his kill in the way cats have been dispatching their kills since time out of mind.  Which, inevitably, led to the fear that the mouse had been poisoned, and that my little kitten might now be in danger of being poisoned also. 

 
FORTUNATELY, this has proven to not be the case.  The Baby, one emergency vet appointment and a full week later, is absolutely fine, thank heaven.  But I have a newfound respect for my youngest "child."  He might be my baby, but he's apparently also got some hunting chops, and he takes his house panther role more seriously than I would have imagined. 

I also, I have to admit, feel kind of sorry for the mouse. Because as bad as my day sucked on the morning that the sole of my bare foot encountered his earthly remains, that poor mouse's day sucked a lot worse.  Imagine if you were a mouse ... and the last thing you saw on this earth were these eyes staring you down ... 

Rest in peace, little mouse.  And I'm glad there are no more of your friends in my house. 

Gadgets for the Techie Pet Owner

I won’t lie … my dogs and cats have a pretty nice life.  I don’t really consider them spoiled, because I do insist that they be reasonably well-mannered and appropriately behaved, but they do have it pretty good.  Though, the way I see it, they deserve it.  They bring an incredible amount of joy, love, and companionship to my life, so even given all I do for them, I still feel like it can’t possibly compare to all they give to me.  Also, all five of them had less than auspicious beginnings in life.  The dogs were both rescue pups, (though The Flying Monkey had an easier time of it than The Paragon did – she got yanked from a high kill shelter in Miami along with her sister and was queening it up in her foster home and sleeping in bed with her foster mom’s little girl when I adopted her) and all three cats were born feral.   I consider myself incredibly lucky to have each of them, but there’s no doubt that they also got pretty lucky to have landed themselves a home with us.  Things could easily have gone far differently for each of them, and indeed, for The Baby in particular, he probably didn’t have much longer out there on his own before starvation, dehydration, and a nasty respiratory infection would have done him in. 

The point is … I do concede that this once-motley, now greatly beloved, furry crew of mine do have things pretty good.  But neither are they particularly spoiled.  Their collars and leashes aren’t terrifically expensive, they don’t have “wardrobes” to speak of, except for a few T-shirts and sweaters for the dogs when it’s cold and they need them, and they certainly aren’t slurping mineral water out of crystal dishes.  They get filtered tap water in stainless steel bowls, and they like it just fine!  About the only thing I do splurge on is their food, but I don’t even really consider that a splurge.  I consider it an investment in their health, and that’s why my vet bills, except for things like routine checkups and blood work, and the required-by-law yearly rabies vaccines (I don’t routinely vaccinate for anything but rabies – I do titers instead), are just about nonexistent. 

But even though I don’t consider myself particularly extravagant (in much of anything, but even where my greatly treasured furry housemates are concerned) I do still like to keep an eye on the trends.  So today when I was scanning MSN.com for my daily dose of all things newsworthy and not-so-newsworthy, my eye was caught by an item that read “The 7 Best Tech Gadgets for Pets.”  I had five minutes to kill, so I clicked.  Here’s what I found:

Gadget #1:  The iFetch ($100 from goifetch.com) 

  
This gadget shoots a ball up to 30 feet away whenever the ball is dropped into the funnel.  For ball-obsessed dogs, whose owners get tired of throwing a ball over and over, I can see the appeal in this gadget.  But in my house, the pups’ preference runs more toward stuffy toys with squeakers than to balls.  I have some friends whose dogs might really like this, though. 

Verdict:  I can see where this might come in handy for some people, but for me I would have to pass.  

Gadget #2:  The Passport Pet Access Smart System Door ($230 from petsafe.com)
 

 Truthfully, I’m kind of surprised that this particular gadget made it on anyone’s short list.  I’ve seen its’ like many times before.  It’s a pet door that can be programmed to allow entry or exit only for designated pets by using a little electronic key that attaches to their collar. As I said, I’ve seen other ones that advertise similar capabilities in the past, so I can’t see what’s so different or great about this particular one. 

 Verdict:  Pass 

Gadget #3:  The Petnet Smart Feeder ($249 from petnet.io) 

Again – I’m not terribly impressed with this one.  Its selling points include that you can manage exactly when your pet eats and exactly how much.  But other automatic feeders can do this, too, and actually, so can I, with my own two hands, albeit not when I am not actually home!  The difference here is that you can program the portion amounts and the times the food is dispensed via a computer, smartphone, or tablet.  I guess this is handy, but again, I prefer to feed my animals myself.  Also, I feed a raw diet, so it probably wouldn’t work very well for me anyway.

Verdict:  Pass

Gadget #4:  The Whistle Activity Monitor ($130 from whistle.com)

Perhaps my Amish roots are showing, but here’s another gadget I just don't see the point in.  A little device hooks on to the pet’s collar, and “uses information like weight, age, and breed to crunch data about your pet’s periods of activity and rest.”  This, apparently, allows you to “set and chart health goals and track behavior patterns.”  To what purpose, I’m not exactly sure. 

Verdict:  Pass 

Gadget #5:  PetChatz ($349 from petchatz.com)

At the risk of sounding like the boat-coveting-woman-from-Napoleon-Dynamite let me just say:  I want this!  Unlike with a web cam, not only can you see/hear your pets, but they can see/hear you as well.  The PetChatz unit is plugged into an electrical outlet and then screwed securely into the wall stud.  The PetChatz unit is connected to your home WiFi network and then you log in to PetChatz.com on your computer, or download the app on your tablet or smartphone, and you’re ready to go.  Go to the PetChatz website and see a video of it in action.

Verdict:  $349 doesn’t seem that bad for this system – heck, it even dispenses treats – but then again – I can think of other things I would probably rather buy for that amount of money.  And yet I can’t deny that I really would like to try it out.  Not even for the dogs so much, as they are with me at the office most days, but for the cats.  Especially because I like to go away for the weekend (usually the dogs come along) and when I do, it’s easy to have my pet sitter come twice a day to feed the cats, but The Hunk, especially, is so shy with people he doesn't know well, that my pet sitter, K, pretty much has to take it on faith that everyone’s still alive and well.  The fact that I could dispense treats remotely would be kind of fun, and I can see The Baby, especially, really digging that.  I’m highly intrigued, and feeling covetous, but not quite ready to whip out my credit card at this juncture. 

Gadget #6:  The Tagg Tracker ($100 from pettracker.com plus an $8 per month service fee after the first 90 days of service) 

This gadget, I admit, is pretty cool.  It attaches to your pet’s collar (it’s designed to be worn at all times – and is even waterproof!) and uses a GPS system to keep tabs on the pet’s location.  If the pet strays from a designated zone, you’ll be alerted by both email and text message, and you can track the pet’s location on a map using your computer, or mobile device (you have to download the free Tagg mobile app for that).  With my current situation, and my current animals, I don’t have much real need of this device, though given The Baby’s penchant for staring holes through doors (and his recently documented ability to OPEN them himself), this probably would be a good idea for him.  And it definitely would have come in handy back in my departed Malamute mix, Dakotah’s, glory days.  That boy could run like the wind, and he’d take any available opportunity to take off and explore on his own.  I remember one sleepless night in particular when a family member accidentally let him out during a torrential rainstorm and he got his collar snagged on something, got stuck fast, and it wasn’t until daylight that someone spotted him.

Verdict:  If you have an escape-prone pet, this definitely seems worth looking into. 

Gadget #7:  The Petcube ($149 from petcube.com) 

Similar to the PetChatz, this gadget is designed to let you keep an eye on your pet(s) when away from home.  Set to debut in May, it will allow you to check in on your pet(s) via a mobile app.  A wide angle camera streams and records HD video to your computer or smartphone, and apparently you can move around a laser pointer to “virtually play with your pet.” Though cheaper than the PetChatz system, this one doesn’t really thrill me.  If I were to choose between the two, I’d rather pay double the money for the PetChatz system as it just seems like it can do more, and is more interactive. 

Verdict:  Pass 

Overall, quite a few of these gadgets were not all that exciting to me, but I really am strongly considering trying out the PetChatz system, and I think the Tagg Tracker is also a great idea, especially for pets that are known escape artists.

What about you?  Do any of these strike your fancy?  Is there a pet-related gadget that you just can't live without?

Guess Who?

Guess who suddenly decided to teach himself how to open doors?

Well, the pronoun has already eliminated two of the suspects.  So you know it wasn't The Diva ...  

"Why bother to learn how to open a door?  That's what servants are for." 

And you know it wasn't The Flying Monkey ...



   "Who me?  I'm just laying here looking cute!  Please excuse my bedhead." 


So that just leaves the boys. 

But it wasn't The Paragon ...

 
"Nope, wasn't me either ... I am perfect, don't you read?"

And it also wasn't The Hunk ... 
 
"Door?  What door?  Yawn."


So by process of elimination, that only leaves ... yep, you guessed it.  It was The Baby.

 

"Yep, it was me.  What's my prize?"

I swear, as anyone reading this as my witness ... this cat is going to be the death of me.  As I have mentioned, his blog moniker could easily have been The Train Wreck or The Money Pit, but it could also easily have been Houdini.  He has yet to prove it, but I would lay odds he could walk on water or upside down on the ceiling if he chose to. And apparently sometime between yesterday and today, he has learned to open doors.  Which presents, as you might imagine, all sorts of possible issues.  I don't "think" he has the strength to open the heavier exterior doors (the front door, the door from the den to the garage, or from the den to the back door leading onto the patio).  But I am making a major mental note not to test that theory anytime soon.  All of those doors will remain securely locked.  But he most definitely can (as he proved twice in succession this evening) open the lighter interior doors at will unless they are locked.  

How do I know?  Well, it's like this.  This past summer, we moved from our previous abode to a 3 story townhouse with an attached one car garage.  As I hate to park in enclosed spaces (it brings out some sort of latent claustrophobia), the garage is used for storage, to house an extra fridge/freezer, to store the rolling trash and recycle bins, and it is also where the litter boxes are. We have three oversize boxes there, and another smaller one on the third floor in the master bath.  The door from the den to the garage was outfitted with a cat door when we moved in, one with a latch so that in the event we wanted to keep the cats in or out of the garage temporarily (shutting them all in the garage so we can Furminate, for example, or, as was my intention this evening, to keep them OUT of the garage so that I could raise the door to roll out the trash can without the cats escaping), such a thing would, in fact, be possible. 

Well, theoretically anyway.  Because the thing is .... The Baby does not enjoy being thwarted.  When he wants in, he wants in.  When he wants out, he wants out. And invariably, whatever side of any given door that he is on is ... you guessed it ... the wrong side.  Which is why the little sliding latch on the cat door was toast in about a week and a half. So now when I want to keep the cats in the garage or out of it, there is some finagling to be done.  

Tonight when I got home, it being the evening before garbage day, I slid the piece of particle board I have for this purpose between the cat door and the door-door to block The Diva and The Hunk from entering the garage until I had opened the garage door, rolled the trash bin out to the street, and shut the door again.  Yep, particle board.  Classy, right?  But see, there is no point in buying and installing another cat door, because I know The Baby.  Once he does something once, it becomes part of his repertoire, so I knew it would only be a matter of time (and not much time, either) before the latch on the new cat door was broken, too.  So I figured I would, in the interest of saving myself time, money, and aggravation, just skip the part where I bought and installed a new cat door, only to be in exactly the same predicament I'm in now.

I also know, unfortunately from past experience, that the particle board barrier might thwart The Diva and The Hunk, (because they are reasonably normal), but it is not going to stop The Baby.  See, when The Diva and The Hunk, again, being reasonably normal (reasonably being the operative word ... they ARE still cats, so normalcy is not really something that is high up on their list of priorities), encounter something like a piece of particle board that is blocking the door through which they usually pass, they treat it as a human might treat a locked door or a posted sign reading DO NOT ENTER.  In other words, they figure "Hey, Mom must be cleaning the latrines.  Better come back later." 

The Baby, on the other hand, does not view it that way at all.  If there is something between him and wherever it is he happens to want to go, he will simply do his level best to remove whatever impediment is in his way. Which is how, apparently, he taught himself to raise the particle board up enough with his paw to get his head under it and then shimmy the rest of his body under, and thereby bypass said impediment.  Which, therefore, makes it necessary, on garbage day (or evening), to lock him in the downstairs half bath off the den, and then slip the particle board barrier in front of the cat door to bar The Diva and The Hunk from entering the garage to use the facilities for the approximately ninety seconds during which the garage door is open to the outside.  

This system, while a bit of a PITA, has worked reliably now for some months.  Until this evening, when, as I was walking back into the garage (having just deposited the rolling trash bin in its position by the street) and was about to hit the button to bring down the door, I happened to hear a rattle of the particle board, and caught a glimpse of a little black paw.  The Baby was at the door, attempting to do his patented lift and shimmy move to gain access to the garage. 

 Whether he needed to use the litter box, or was just sick of waiting for dinner, I'm not sure, but there he was. So clearly, we will need to figure out another system of securing the perimeter against unauthorized escape by one very determined little black cat.  

Any ideas? 

Meet The Baby

What to say about The Baby? Well, I could start with the fact that I could easily have chosen The Train Wreck or The Money Pit as his moniker, rather than the one I did. This boy has been adventure, that is for sure! 

As The Diva and The Hunk both were, The Money Pit, er The Baby was a feral kitten. Unlike them, however, he did not have the good fortune to be discovered and rescued at a very young age, as they did. The Baby was not mere weeks old, but four months old, when I drove into the parking lot at my office early one morning and found him lying at the edge of the concrete, completely motionless.

I'll spare you the full details of the story of how, after calling about twelve different cat rescues (all of whom were full up, it being kitten season and all), I actually did find him a home, only to have them call me the very next day and ask me to come get him or they were going to take him to the humane society and turn him in. The reason? He was hiding under the bed. (Shocking, right? A kitten that was completely feral less than two weeks before hiding under the bed a strange environment? No WONDER they wanted to turn him in to the humane society!  Idiots!)

Needless to say, I went and got him immediately, and guess what? As soon as I called the name that I'd tried really hard not to give him, he popped out from under the bed, meowed sharply, and ran to me so I could pick him up, something he still does to this day. (Whenever I call his name, he will come running to me from wherever he is in the house, and then stand up on his hind legs so that I can grasp him under his armpits and lift him into my arms, rather like you would a human child.)

Anyway, after this failed attempt at finding him another home, I bowed as gracefully as possible to the inevitable, and brought him home with me, expecting full well that The Diva would unleash her wrath on not just The Baby, but on me as well. In a bizarre turn of events, however, she scarcely raised an eyebrow. It was The Hunk who went into a semi-tailspin, but being the easygoing guy he is, he snapped out of it soon enough. That was three and a half years ago, and The Baby is now four years old.

Like I said ... it's been an adventure. Remember how I said I could easily have nicknamed him The Train Wreck or The Money Pit? Both would have been right on point, for different reasons.

The wheezy rattle I heard in his lungs on that first day persisted for months. It took multiple courses of antibiotics to get rid of it, and to this day, even though he doesn't have any infection, he will still wheeze a bit if he's been playing hard, and at night, he snores. Then, of course, the antibiotics unsettled his stomach and killed his appetite, and he needed every last calorie I could get into him. So he had to be on mirtazapine to kick-start his appetite, but this made him completely sketch out, so then we had to play around with the dosage to get him to a point where his appetite increased without the sketch-out effect. When things were still only marginally improved after two strong courses of antibiotics, my vet suggested a chest X-ray to be sure he didn't have a chest mass.

He didn't, but it was months, and thousands of dollars, before he was well. Truthfully, I credit the L-Lysine supplementation and a raw diet far more than I do the multiple courses of antibiotics, not that it really matters. The numerous broken picture frames, broken lamps, broken dishes, well ... I was just glad he never broke his neck. Paw prints on the windows, my foot. I swear that cat can walk on the ceiling!

Also, perhaps because he spent the first four months of his life almost literally starving to death, The Baby could also have been nicknamed The Beggar. I don't permit my dogs to beg for food while I'm eating, and with the cats it had never really been an issue. The Diva does like to try to stick her head in my cereal bowl if she can, but she is also well-mannered enough to wait patiently until I'm finished, knowing that if she does, I will allow her one or two dainty licks before taking the bowl away. The Beggar, er The Baby, is another story altogether!

He begs relentlessly, and despite numerous not so subtle hints, he never seems to get the message. He's also an opportunist, and woe to the person who foolishly leaves a plate unattended while he's on the prowl. Whatever it was will be gone when they return, with hardly a trace left behind, as though the food simply vanished into thin air.

He's not fussy, either. He will eat literally anything, from mushrooms to pizza crust. I don't, for the record, make a habit of feeding him these things, although now, after three and a half years of working on it, he will usually, now, sit quietly under my chair while I'm eating, and I will occasionally reward him for staying there by slipping him a tiny bite of something, just to reinforce him sitting there quietly on the floor as opposed to parading around on the dining room table. I love my cats, but I draw the line at table or counter strolling. (Ya gotta draw one somewhere, and that's where I draw mine!)

You may notice that all of my cat stories say something, somewhere, about "I wasn't planning on getting a kitten," or "I hadn't intended to keep him," or something in that vein. Well, yeah, and I hadn't intended to keep The Baby, either. I worked harder to find him a home than I really wanted to, since it didn't take me long to fall in love with him, but I did feel that two dogs and two cats was plenty in an 1,100 square foot house, even if the dogs were pretty small. I still feel that way, even though now we've moved, and gained an additional 800 square feet in the bargain. But sometimes fate or destiny, or even sheer stupid sentimentality, wins out.

He nearly sent me to the poor house and/or the loony bin more than once during his first year, and he still tries my patience more than any other animal in the house. I have often said I am not sure if he's just really dumb, really stubborn, or really smart. The truth is, I'm still not sure, and I guess it doesn't really matter. The Baby is who is he is, and I really wouldn't have him any other way.