Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim'rous beastie (Friday Cat-Blogging)

As I write this, sitting at my desk as the sun rises, my feet folded up on the chair for reasons that shall become obvious in a moment, Tasha sits two feet from me, feet folded up into a cat-muff, waiting.

Two nights ago, just at midnight, just as I was turning off my nightly election-dose of Stephen Colbert, Tasha brought another "preymate" home with her. She can get through the cat-door with a mouse in tow, but not down from the high platform (descent to floor level in this basement room involves three steep jumps or one long one, direct to my bed). On the jump down she invariably reflexively opens her jaws, and the struggling wee beastie falls out and dashes off for safety, squee-squeaking to wake the dead. Or at least enough to wake the merely sleeping, or the about-to-be sleeping. Or the would-rather-be sleeping.

This is the fourth mouse, the second in two weeks. The first two visited in late summer, and since I've heard no peep from them in months, I assumed they met their deaths when I was out of the room. The third, too, disappeared without a trace after two nights. I've put out live traps, but they are never sprung (perhaps the mice don't like peanut butter as much as claimed). (Mice are not the only species picked-on: there was a period in summer when the fledglings, appetizingly flightless for two or so days, were hopping out of their parents' nests -- we had 15 preymates, mice and birds, in and around the basement in 20 days.)

The kitty carnage upsets me. I like mice (that is, I like mice safely in the underbrush outside, not so much shrieking across the floor in the pitch dark, skidding under the piles of laundry in front of the washing machine, or huddling in the toe of a discarded shoe). I don't like torture or death, generally. I don't care to be woken from dreams of white, high-ceilinged, dusty rooms by a squealing, violently playful death. And frankly, the little mouse is as cute as the raccoons which plague us at sunset.

Live traps ineffective, reflexes slowed by sleep, and brain muffled by sleeplessness, my usual response is to wearily pick up a pillow and move upstairs to the couch, but I'm getting tired of switching rooms. And despite liking mice, some kind of instinctive panic overcomes me when I see one racing across the floor, and I'm useless at quick-thinking, grabbing-a-pail and catching-it-by-hand type of bravery. My housemates are sympathetic, but don't seem to me to fully appreciate the gruesome prospect of having Tasha bring a struggling, half-dead mouse onto my chest for a triumphant snack at three in the morning.

However, I guess I've been over-reacting. Four times last night, Tasha caught the wee cowran sleekit, and four times she let it go. It's much too interesting to just shake and kill. I can always tell where the mouse was last seen, because Tasha is vigilantly guarding the spot, for hours at a time. She loses interest after a while, and walks around, mewing with what I anthropomorphize as frustration, and then returns to her post. Harry watches her watch it, but his hobby tends towards birds, and he seems generally uninterested (beyond the required ears-up alertness when he senses scurrying).

At the moment, it is huddling under the bookshelf next to my desk. Five minutes before I started this post, it ran yet another circuit of the room, under my desk, between my feet, around, under the bed and then back to safety, Tasha pouncing right behind it the whole way. I've since set the live trap (the gray thing in the photo) right at the entrance to its hidey-hole. A moment ago, it simply shoved the live trap aside and stood outside its hole for 30 seconds, apparently stretching its limbs in a shaft of sunlight, yawning to welcome the morning. Tasha tensed but didn't spring, and it strolled back into its crevice, out of harm's way. I may force HomoDomi (whose rock-like reflexes have saved the lives of several birds and mice before this) to help me catch the beastie, who seems to be overcoming that cowran).

And now, some poetry to take us out:

For I will consider my Cat [Tasha].
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness...

For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For second he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood..

For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having consider'd God, and himself, he will consider his neighbor.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger...

For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery...

For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

-- from For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry, a.k.a. Jubilate Agno, by Christopher Smart