Mighty Mighty Mingo is a Mighty Mighty Mouser (no pictures). We’ve discussed this before. A couple of days ago, Arthur said he saw Mingo with a dead mouse, but he didn’t know where the body was.
I wasn’t worried, I figured it would turn up, and sure enough, when I came downstairs this morning, there it was, all gray and dead on the living room floor. So I went to get a plastic bag to put it in, and another to wrap my hand in while handling it, and I came back.
And froze.
I don’t know. I was suddenly confronted with the unknowability of death. The blank space of it. And for a moment, I simply couldn’t touch it. I’ve cleaned up little post-cat corpses before, I’ve never felt that, but suddenly it was something untouchable.
So that took a few seconds, and I shook it off, and lifted it by the tail, but there it was again. How heavy and stiff the little body was. Probably 2 inches long, not counting the tail, and it felt like it weighed a pound (which is ridiculous), and I thought how much lighter life is than death.
And then, y’know, wrapped it in plastic and threw it away and moved the fuck on. Because my morning need not be about ruminations on mortality. It is much better for it to be about cleaning up the mess in the living room.
I feel your pain. I’ve had to get rid of a couple of big fuckin dead rats out of the garage–like six or seven inches without tail. And one of them had been stuck in a hard-to-reach spot for a week or more. Mortality sucks, but it sucks a lot worse when it starts to smell bad.
Mortality sucks, but it sucks a lot worse when it starts to smell bad.
I feel a sig coming on.
Now that I have a mommy prairie kingsnake and her offspring living in my woodpile, I haven’t had any further issues with mousies in the house. But last month I caught one of the neighborhood kitties in the backyard with part of a squirrel; he left me the tail, two legs, and some unmentionable interior parts–and my husband made ME dispose of the bits!
Doesn’t Mingo bring you his mice? Everyone I know who has a cat has told me stories of how they bring them gifts of birds, mice, etc., usually with an aren’t-you-proud-of-me-Mommy air as they present it.
I left for work this morning knowing txrad would have plenty of work here at the house. Tater Tot had a vomit episode and he kept circling the kitchen table, depositing a pile here, a little there.
I’m wondering if it was a winter soltice ritual! Which, as you well know, is a mere 6.7 hours from now, not that I’m counting.
HAPPY SOLSTICE!
Mel, Mingo leaves the mouse when he’s tired of it. Sometimes with the “stuffing” torn out.
Kona, thanks. Same to you!
Eli usually eats them and then has a bellyache the next day. Or he tries to smuggle them in the back door still alive, to play with inside.
We have a stone wall out back with tons of chipmunks in it, so he catches those frequently. They’ve learned to play dead in his mouth until he puts them down or we intervene, and they get a chance to break for it. We’ve rescued lots of birds too, which zoom up right out of his mouth if you grab him soon enough.
The best is Eli coming up while you’re engrossed in a book on the chair out back and dropping a live snake on the patio at your feet. So far just garter snakes, but some pretty big ones. Life in that case is worse than death.
I don’t think we have mice or at least, I’ve never found remnants in the house. My cats aren’t the mousers, my dogs are. I see them, in the yard, picking up voles, moles and other mouse-like creatures and gleefully tossing them into the air. It’s….well, disturbing.