The Uninvited

Prelude ... One year ago today, The Gray Mouser entered our lives. A few days later, he was invited into our house, making Whitey wonder what was behind the bathroom door.

It's summer again, which means one needs to watch for bread going moldy faster and all the other joys of a world that is awake again. This being trash night and some of the aforementioned bread having seriously expired, I grabbed it out of the walk-in pantry and tossed into the yard waste. This wasn't enough for Whitey it appeared, as a half-hour later he was crouched at the door (which incidentally is just out of the photo from last year) wondering what smell I stirred up.

So I opened the door to show him how boring the pantry is, and he starts climbing the wire shelves. (Knock yourself out kid.) I went across the kitchen get treats to lure him back down, but before I could, he crashed to the floor -- mouse in mouth!

Okay, not boring.

Thus began 10 minutes of motivated but inexperienced hunters chasing a live target and not quite able to finish him off. This was in no doubt partly because cats are solo hunters, and this wasn't exactly the time to form Team Catzilla. Billy wanted to take possession, and I was afraid the boys were going to seriously tangle with each other for the first time in their lives. However, Whitey accidentally dropped it and it scampered away, and making the point moot.

But given two healthy (if disorganized) hunters and a human willing to assist by lifting any objects the mouse can hide under (like a vacuum), the rodent was seriously out classed. He was accidentally herded into the relatively bare front hall, where Billy kept him from slipping under the closet door with The Fastest Paws in the West, and then I took over, slapping an upside-down wastebasket over the by now wounded mouse.

The boys were then ushered aside, and I booted the uninvited guest out the front door using the wastebasket. (I wasn't interested in saving him, but I neither wanted the boys fighting over his remains nor further handling him myself.) He was last seen running for his life off our porch.

I cleaned up various mouse blood stains, found the new bread the guest had gnawed on and tossed it, applied a temporary seal to the hole in the pantry that some network cables enter via (it may not keep out his friends, but we'll be able to tell if it is disturbed), and let the boys patrol all they wanted for a half hour to leave cat smell as a warning to others.

Tomorrow I'll call an exterminator to check the crawl space and set bait.