Of Mice and Cats

Hello folks, I can tell you that it’s now officially autumn, the leaves are changing colour and falling from the trees, the days are shorter, it’s much cooler and there are some incredible nose-bending smells in the mornings when we go on our walk.  We live in the country and in the autumn all the small animals that live outside look for somewhere nice and warm to stay for the winter.  These animals are called rodents, and since the cats came to live with us me an Roma are getting very good at identifying them.

A lot of them have moved into our house, it’s like a wildlife park, Calypso catches them and brings them in to play with.  She has a lot of fun with  them because they move all by themselves so are much better than toys.  She really is a silly cat, she lets them go and then wants them to play and chase her, of course they run away and hide, they’re not stupid!

Then last week she bought in a Loir, this is not the river Loire that some of you who are good at French geography might know about, or anything to do with the French departments Loir-et-Cher (41) or Eure-et-Loir (28), see, I know a lot about France, it’s a rodent the size of a small rat with a hairy tail and Pam says it’s a sort of Door Mouse.  All these wild animals have such weird names, maybe it likes to live near doors.  Anyway Calypso bought it in, we all saw her come through the hole in the door with it.  Me an Roma don’t know how she caught it because after she’d let go of it she couldn’t catch it again.  It was everywhere, up, over and around the chairs, behind the cupboards and it made a screeching noise whenever she tried to touch it.  Calypso got a bit scared by the noise and then it hid under the washing machine.  We didn’t see it for a day or so until it moved into Pam’s office.

Meanwhile Calypso had given up on the Loir and bought in a mouse, which she left in Pam’s office behind the bookcase to play with when she wanted.  So Pam went to switch on her computer and found the cats staking out the office and rodents scurrying around her feet.  She wasn’t very pleased, she says it’s not good to have them in the house, I don’t know why, she usually likes having animals around.  Neither of the cats could catch the mouse or the Loir, so Pam got a cage and put some food in it, the idea was the Loir could get in but not out, and then Pam would  take it into the garden and let it go.  The mouse thought this was great as it was small enough to get in and eat the food, then it ran away with the food.  The look on Pam’s face when she saw the mouse eating the food was quite priceless, and we all thought that was very funny, but I don’t think Pam did.

Pam was not looking happy and didn’t know if the Loir in her office was the the Loir from the kitchen, or if it was another one and there were two.  So I asked Jazz, my best cat friend, who’s a very good hunter, if he could catch them and he said if he saw them running around he would try, but when Calypso was playing with them she wasn’t jumping on his head, so he was quite happy to let her play and wasn’t too keen on catching either of them.  Not very helpful that and I had expected a bit more assistance from him, he is the male cat of the house after all.

The Loir was quite aggressive and Calypso didn’t dare touch it, in the end she chased it into the bathroom so Pam shut it in there and opened the window  and when she went back a few hours later the bathroom was empty.  It must have gone up the wall and out the window, clever eh?  I wouldn’t mind being able to walk up walls, could have a lot of fun doing that ….  Anyway, she put the cats in the bathroom and they couldn’t find anything either, so the Loir really had gone.  THANK GOODNESS, me an Roma don’t like all the noise and disruption and often feel sorry for the poor animals, German Shepherd Dogs don’t play with rodents or eat them, we’re far too sensible!!! 

I nearly forgot, there’s still the mouse, one gone, one to go ……….