The Attack of the Moron Cat OR Moron Cat Finds a Special Friend

Recently I was sitting at my desk, writing.  (I might have really been juggling six torches and a chainsaw while sipping a martini.)  (No, I wasn't, but I might have been.)  Suddenly, Moron Cat, otherwise known as Megaroy, otherwise known as my daughter's cat, comes in from the garage.  Why was he in the garage, you might ask?  Well, it's someplace for him to explore and leave me alone to write.  Moron Cat thinks that I am his human despite my consistent affirmations that I think that he is a) a moron, b) stinky, and c) so not my cat.  He, despite his lack of intelligence, has learned that putting his claws into my ass while writing will garner him attention.  Granted chasing after him with a butcher's knife isn't always the attention he wants but it's attention.  (This is called negative reinforcement for all you Skinnerians.)  So I let him in the garage where he can chase Daddy Long Legs and sniff boxes and do things that do not include inserting his claws into my buttocks through the back of the mesh chair I sit in to create literary masterpieces.

Sounds good, right?

Well, he exploded into the room and I looked over to see him go into the kitchen and put something down by his food bowl.  I thought, "My goodness, he found a cockroach."  Then I reconsidered when the thing started to run toward me.  It was somewhat larger than the average cockroach.  (Although I have seen some pretty large cockroaches.)  "My goodness," I thought, "FUCKING MOUSE!"

Megaroy had found a special friend in the garage and he brought it in to share.  Isn't that nice?
I started making noises (high pitched girly noises, I'm not afraid to admit) and pulled my feet up.  The cat tried to recapture his mousely booty.  HIM and the kid ran in to see why I was screeching.  Just another fun day in the Bevill household, let me tell you.

Upon reflection, it occurs to me that Megaroy was doing one of two things with his new mouse buddy.  1) Moron Cat was trying to show the mouse his food bowl.  He wanted to share a bite with the mouse.  After all, he dropped the mouse right next to the food bowl.  OR 2) Megaroy brought the mouse to the food bowl because that is where food (the mouse) was to be eaten.  All that training of the Moron Cat paid off.  Either that or Moron Cat is also OCD Cat, or he who can't eat anywhere but from the food bowl.  (I didn't ask him which it was.  I was busy shrieking.)

It took HIM about three minutes to make it the twenty-five or so feet from the den to the kitchen.  (Apparently I scream and make girly noises so much that it really didn't register as a genuine issue for HIM.  Wait until that serial killer with the axe shows up and I can say, "See.  When I scream, there's something really to be worried about.")

Megaroy was having a very good time chasing the mouse.  The mouse first darted at me.  Then the mouse apparently decided that I was too loud, big, and girly to rescue him, so he headed back into the kitchen.  Megaroy probably thought I should have been more properly appreciative.  I was not.

The mouse went over to the fridge and did not find refuge.

HIM finally showed up.  The kid decided that if Mommy was afraid of it, she should hang out on the stairs where it was safe.  (She also picked up a mouse toy that belongs to Megaroy and thought she could distract the real mouse with the fake mouse.  I kind of like that thinking.)  HIM found a Cheezit box to trap and/or decimate the mouse.  (A Cheezit box from Sam's Club.  The big kind of Cheezit box that someone could probably be buried in.  And yes, the Cheezits were absent from the box.)

The mouse took exception to the box and evaded HIM and Megaroy, although Megaroy had his big-ass paw on the mouse a couple of times.  Perhaps Megaroy got freaked out by the Cheezit box.  I was too busy making noises from the office and holding my feet off the floor.

The mouse evaded the cat, HIM, the Cheezit box, the fake mouse, and my shrieking by escaping under the kitchen counters.

The cat was pissed.  The kid doesn't want to go into the kitchen anymore.  (She said something about rabies, which really impressed me because I thought at first she was talking about a hantavirus.)  The Cheezit box didn't care one way or the other.  I'm afraid for my toes.  (I have a mental image of washing dishes at the sink while a mouse tries to nibble on said digits.)  HIM was relieved he didn't have to dispose of a little rodent body.  (Try to picture a burial at sea, except not at sea, and in a bathroom with a toilet already flushing.  Sailors everywhere are shuddering.)

We went and got mouse traps plus peanut butter.  They have a nice selection at Home Depot.  So far we haven't caught any mousies.  And I feel compelled to inject my very favorite Kliban cartoon.  I wish Megaroy knew how to read and had a brain instead of dead space there so he could read this cartoon and gain inspiration from it.  Too bad.