If she starts fetching the bar for you that is a keeper! LOL. Yeah my cats are First World Kitties. “Hey, don’t you like have humans you pay to catch these things?”

Bat not Bar…

I have two cats, Patches and Zu. Patches generally marches to her own drummer, so tho’ she’s an able hunter, only hunts for sport. Zu on the other hand is the clumsiest, laziest cat I’ve ever had in my life. She’s the kind of cat that falls down trying to jump onto a ledge. What kind of cat falls down?? She’s ten years old now, but for most of her life she couldn’t catch a live animal even if she was starving. Feeling inadequate, however, she would often pick up a dead, dry leaf from our magnolia or bamboo and bring it into the house as a gift, laying it in the centre of the room. Then she would waltz around yowling to announce her hunting prowess. Pathetic, I know, but we would of course thank her profusely and congratulate her. This went on for years. Little did we know what this encouragement would lead to.

Then, suddenly she acquired hunting skills, and started to bring live birds and moles and things into the house – and release them! Because that’s more fun! Or maybe she didn’t have such a good grip… dunno. About a year ago, she brought a baby field mouse into the house and let it go. We tried to catch it but it disappeared. For a while. Then the tell-tale mouse dropping would appear in weird places (drawers, etc.) Then I would find stashes of cat kibbles in the video drawers. I would clean up the mess and they would reappear. Then I found half eaten candy canes, chewing gum and wax candles. We set have-a-heart traps. No luck. After a while we got desperate and set real nasty old fashioned clamp traps, baited with peanut butter and cheese and other good stuff. Still no luck. There were sightings! The mouse was no longer a baby, but rather a HUGE glutted thing (not surprising, considering his diet of junk food). We made meaningful eye contact, but the mouse (by this time named Noel, as Christmas was approaching) could not be caught. So we decided to take the place apart. We moved furniture. We found more chewed up stuff. More mouse droppings. Then we discovered that Noel had made an apartment for himself behind the range, complete with furniture made of shredding insulation. We cleaned it up, blockaded everything with duct tape. Finally we got Noel out in the open, chased him around (what were the cats doing, you ask? Were they helping with the chase?? Nooo. They were watching, of course, with great interest. Well, Zu was. Patches was sleeping.) We barricaded Noel in a corner, finally trapped him under a sieve and sat back to have a look. I don’t know what kind of mouse he was, but he was enour-mouse.

And he was injured. From the chase or his hard (HA!) life, we don’t know. But we couldn’t release him in that condition, so we fed him for a week or two until his sore paw, broken tail and icky eye healed. He was well again and kind of frisky. Cute as anything, but boy did he smell bad. On the eve of the day we planned to take him to his new home in the park, he escaped!!! Our friends and relatives by this time are rolling their eyes. Exasperated, we watched for him for a while, but saw no sign of him. Now he was in a different part of the house, not so well stocked with snacks. So hubby figured he might be getting hungry, and set the have a heart trap with a hunk of cheddar. For my birthday, (near the end of January), he presented me with Noel in his cage. Hurray! We released him the very next day, not wanting to push our luck this time. Probably some wild predator or better trained house cat got him within 24 hours, but at least his demise was not attributable to anyone (human or feline) in MY household. This entire saga lasted about seven months! I’m thinking theirs a children’s book in there somewhere.

Cheers! MA

Roo-Bee is a TOTAL attention-whore.