On Twitter recently I confessed to having attempted to give a mouse the kiss of life having rescued it from the jaws of a cat. I gave it a bit of peach & blew JD fumes up it's nose. It died!
I gave it a very drunken burial in the garden. Did I mention I was drunk?!?
The next morning I nearly stepped on it's muddy, cat spit sodden body as I made my way to the kitchen in search of a hangover cure. I'm assuming that JD fumes & peach aren't hoodoo enough to create a zombie mouse & that one of the cats had decided that an exhumation was in order.
These particular cats made my life very interesting.....................
A very long time ago I moved in to a house with my friend Sam and her two cats, Gizmo & Tabitha (aka G&T). Our other friend Sally also moved in with us and we lived in a wonderful, fluffy, pink girly world - most of the time.
G&T were 2 years old and had spent their whole lives - up to that point - as flat cats. No they didn't arrive wrapped in cardboard and requiring self assembly. Sheesh!
They'd never been outside before and our new orchard of a back garden was a weird and wonderful place with lots of strange and frightening creatures - for all of about 3 days! After which they morphed into bloodthirsty killing machines & I secretly renamed them
Ian & Myra.
There didn't seem to be anything these cats wouldn't maim or kill or terrorise - including the bulldog over the back fence and whose sole responsibility was to protect it's owners prize doves.
It failed, many many many times.
I could often be found climbing over said fence with a dove tucked under my arm. (Ooh, that reminds me of my wedding night when I was climbing over hotel balconies with a kettle under my arm - if you ask me, I'll tell you)
I think it was on the fifth time of returning one of these doves that my neighbour said "I don't know how your cats get in. How they gets past the dog and under the wire fencing. Are you breeding S A fucking S cats over there or something?" I think we officially became the neighbours from hell at that point.
Which leads me to a question - Have you ever heard the noise a frog makes when it's being tortured by SAS cats?
They scream. Like a baby or a really small child screams. It's the most horrific sound & all the more terrible if you've never heard it before and are woken up, in the middle of the night, by the sound of a 'child' screaming AND it's coming from the direction of your lounge.
Did I mention that G&T were identical twins? Well, it's fairly relevant to this story so I should have done.
That night, I crept to the lounge and threw the light on. In the middle of the floor were G&T half sitting, half laying, facing each and between them sat the biggest, ugliest frog I've ever seen and that frog was screaming.
G&T were playing a tortuous game of 'smack' with the poor thing. One would stick it's nose up against the frogs face and then smack it on the head. The frog would scream & hop/spin 180 only to be met with the face & smack of an identical cat whereupon it would scream again and do another hop/spin 180. Poor bloody thing. No matter which way it turned it must have felt like it couldn't get away from this horrible sniffy, smacky cat.
Once I was over the shock, I broke that party up and rescued said frog only to find it the next morning squashed beneath the tyre of Sally's car! I suspect it probably had post traumatic stress disorder threw itself under her wheels.
Want to hear a frog scream? www.youtube.com/watch?v=948rhsRvIkw Not the best example but you get the idea.
G&T would regularly bring us fresh squishy deliveries and there was once a morning when I opened my eyes, having had a glorious sleep, only to be confronted with the headless body of a mouse on my pillow, right next to my cheek. Trust me, you really don't want to see a mouse's innards, not before breakfast at least anyway.
Thankfully I now have two of the most apathetic cats when it comes to hunting. The only thing they ever bring me is leaves. I did find them playing with a may bug in the hallway once but I'm pretty sure it had made it's own way into the house by accident.
Sometimes it would be nice to have hunters again, if only to keep the daddy long legs & moth population under control. Ultimately, though, I like to imagine them throwing the cat equivalent of a peace sign & conscientiously objecting but I suspect that they are just too damn lazy.
As a cat lovely, this is a brilliant little story. I can associate tottally with it. I had the unpleasant experiance of watching my catch beat a small field mouse around our garden once. Molly would bat the mouse with her paw. then sit staring while the mouse would stand up facing the cat as if in a boxing stance to protect itself. I actually videoed this little massacre on my phone. My neighbour wife watched as well and was nearly sick.
ReplyDeleteBtw I did rescue the mouse but it already had injuries and died pretty quickly so I didn't just stand and watch a fight to the death lol. Nature is a harsh mistress sometimes.