Cats!

A few weeks ago, I discovered that some creature had been eating my super special hard-won, home grown pumpkins in the root cellar. One of them was half eaten. That's a lot of squash. There were mouse droppings nearby.

Four evenings ago, I heard a rustling. I was alone in the living room. I went over to the fireplace, where it was coming from, and peered into the vent where the fan blows the hot air out of the fireplace. A mouse jumped out an inch from my nose, sailed through the air and ran off into the corner of the room, behind some boxes.

The night before last, we found an old mouse trap in the kitchen with just the tail of a mouse caught in it. The rest of the mouse was gone. Later on that night, I kept hearing a rustling in the kitchen.

Last night, bad ass husband and I were sitting in the dining room, playing a board game, when we heard the pitter patter of mouse feet above our heads, between the ceiling and the upstairs floor. Over and over. On and on. At the same time, we heard another mouse in the garbage under the sink.

"Maybe it's time to get a cat."

So, today we went to the Humane Society, looking for a young, playful cat. We did not say, "We need a good mouser." That's because they frown on that. I don't know why. Is it because it's cruel to the mouse? Because it sure isn't cruel to the cat. In my experience, there is no happier cat than a mouse hunting cat.

We went to Madison today and found these two sweeties at the Humane Society:






The orange one is a male, the grey is a female. They're both a year old. They came with the names, "Toby" for the orange and "Tipper" for the grey. I wanted especially to change "Tipper," because it just reminds me of Tipper Gore, and I don't want Tipper Gore sitting on my lap waiting to be pet. I've always wanted to have two cats named "Beastie" and "Ludwig Wittgenstein," but when we met them, they seemed a bit too small and innocent for such grand names. Little Z started calling "Tipper" "Kipper", which is just fine. So I guess we won't be insanely creative. Perhaps we'll change our minds tomorrow and call them "Rasputina Gravytrain" and "Dave".

I let Toby investigate the cupboard under the sink. We showed that mouse that we've jumped it up a notch. We've only had the cats a few hours, but thus far, they have spent much time patrolling the grounds, chasing anything that moves. They chased Little Z a lot. I give them high marks for their first day.

In summary, to rid ourselves of a lot of tiny creatures roaming around, we got some bigger creatures to roam around, and now we have lots of things roaming around.