Gramsci's first mouse ...

... is, I hope, still alive somewhere at the bottom of our driveway.

I was eating my breakfast when I saw Gramsci trotting towards me with a mouse in his mouth - I thought it was one of his toy mice (let's call them "trainer mice," going forwards), waiting to be thrown - until I realised it had black beady eyes and a long tail and ... Grams looked very pleased with himself.  Then he dropped it, and it scampered off into the farthest corner of the room, under a wooden cart/side table.  Admittedly, this wasn't the best circumstances for a flashless photo, but this gives you a sense of the peril the mouse was in ... it then fled again; Grammy pounced - and the next thing I knew he dropped it again and it (wise mouse) was lying on its back in the middle of the hall, pretending to be dead.

So I scooped it up with the bowl-and-cardboard contraption we keep handy for centipedes (and mice), and (it was far from dead) took it down the driveway in the rain.  It looked a bit battered - but if this was the mouse that Moth caught-and-released a couple of days back that's been hiding out somewhere (and let's hope that's the case), it's had some nasty experiences recently in cats' mouths.  I was pleased Gramsci didn't use his preternaturally long teeth on it.  What a day for him!