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