We live in an old house, and we have cats. I have become accustomed to the occasional small bird or mouse delivered to me as a prize. I appreciate this service that my cats provide as a primitive, yet communicative report from my feline exterminators of their chemical free termination of a household pest. I do not, however, want to be part of the process.
When I hear a commotion in the dining room, the last thing I want to see is two cats chasing a mouse around. I know I’m a much bigger threat to the mouse, hypothetically, than the mouse is to me, but I am just not cool with a mouse running through my dining room. I’m also not cool with my cat grabbing this mouse in her mouth with authority, but somehow not killing it.
I know, it’s my fault. I thought “You should take the cat and mouse to the front porch and remove the mouse now.” But I really don’t want to be a mouse killer. I want to draw the line at mouse killer owner, mouse killer enabler. That’s enough, I don’t need literal mouse blood on my hands. How the heck do you kill a mouse? I’m a city girl, and I’d prefer to stay that way. I don’t want to be the sort of practical Iowa woman who knows instantly how to dispatch a mouse ten different ways when faced with one in her dining room.
So I left the cats to their mouse, but those little suckers let the mouse go! Jerks! The mouse, who was very smart, made a break for the closet, which was a horrifying mess of all the things we’ve ever had to hide on the first floor in the past two years, in addition to a minimum of three coats for every conceivable temperature for each member of our family. Once I pulled everything out of the closet in a desperate yet fruitless attempt to give my killers access to the mouse interloper, I realized I had my day 22 declutter opportunity. Which turned into my day 22 and 23, because you wouldn’t believe how much crap you can cram into a closet, and yet still end up with a full closet of stuff you might actually use at the end, but 45 items later, my closet was a little closer to reasonable, and I may have just found my next remodeling project: sealing the holes in the closet and adding shelves to keep stuff off the floor. The closet will not be a mouse refuge much longer, interlopers!
Hatton House Diaries 