cat and mouse acts

Lucy looks very pretty with a mouse in her mouth.   Last night, just as we were going to bed, I came into the living room to see LucyFur on the back of an armchair, and Bitzi on the table, staring at the ceiling.   And there, running around on the vigas - the cross-beams - was a mouse.   Oh cat delight.   Oh human horror.   We have spent weeks having Critter Control trying to control the critters in our garage, on our roof, but this little rodent was the first we'd seen in the actual house.   What to do?   Not too difficult - we left all four cats in the living room for the night.

But.   This morning - no corpse.   Not even a tail.   And then we saw that maybe a couple of them were sniffing around one little area, and there - Alice moved the boom box, and it was hiding underneath - was a slightly battered, slightly punctured, but very live mouse.   So we captured her (upturned wastepaper bin; sheet of stiff card) and put her outside the front door - took out Lucy - lifted off waste bin, and let Lucy play the huntress.   If this seems cruel - we really didn't want the mouse back again ...

But.   Lucy let it bounce away, went after it, caught it - here! - gently in her mouth, dropped it, patted it, patted it again - and off it ran under a bush.

Of course, her posture here is strongly reminiscent of the suffragette poster:

The Cat and Mouse Act was passed in 1913, and after it was introduced suffragettes who went on hunger strike in prison were no longer force-fed.  Rather, they were kept there till they became very weak - and then they were released to recover.  So the government could claim that any injury, up to and including death that resulted from the starvation was entirely the suffragette's fault - and, what's more, and released suffragette who broke the law again was put straight back in prison.   In other words, it's possible to offer up a very PC feminist reading of this brave little mouse.   I think.

And yes - if you were concerned - THE BLUEBIRDS HAVE FLOWN!   One baby bb was sitting in a tree this morning - and soon departed with her father and elder brother to explore Eldorado; the other went off with his mother around lunchtime.   Let's hope they don't meet any cats ...