Hunting in Tandem

July 30, 2014 Wednesday

We have had a most exciting morning.

It all started with a break in routine. Since Apricot started not staying in the bedroom with me at night, we have this thing where I get out of bed in the morning and then announce loudly, "Apricot, I'm up" (or "I'm awake", whatever) and he comes bounding into the room, ready for his morning petting session.

This morning I announced that I was awake, as usual, but he did not show up. I called him again. No kitty. Well, being me, now I'm all worried and envisioning the worst--did he fall off the cat tree again and hurt himself so bad he can't move?

I padded out in my bed socks and pjs, without my glasses, to see what I could see. What I saw was Apricot in the living room, staring fixedly at the curtain on the patio door. Or possibly the edge of the mantel. He wasn't consistent in where he was looking.

Where it all started

Ah ha, I thought to myself, happy to see he was okay. He's got another flying insect cornered, and can't get at it! I went over and peered around, but couldn't see anything. So I lifted Apricot up (this momentarily startled him but then he realized he was closer to his goal and was okay with it) to see where he'd try to reach out to.

Again, inconsistent results; he didn't start staring at anything in particular. Was the circle of light on the ceiling from the lamp puzzling him? Oh, perhaps the bug had found refuge in the folds of the curtain. That was more likely. I put Apricot down before going to the curtain and shaking it gently. I have previous experience that tells me holding the cat while flushing out its flying toy is a bad idea.

Well, I was right and I was wrong. The curtain was where the item of interest was, all right. But it wasn't an insect.

Did you know mice can climb curtains? And when you shake said curtain and the mouse falls out of it right in front of you, it can be quite startling?

Actually, when the mouse hit the floor it squeaked, making exactly the same noise as Apricot's squeaky mouse that his friend Lynn gave him. (I think it's an electronic recording of the noise a mouse actually makes, now that I've heard it for real!) And my first thought was, "How'd he get his toy up there?" followed by "it's MOVING" which was then followed by "eek, a mouse!" only by this time I'd passed the point of jumping because I was startled and the realization it was a live mouse was mostly just "oh, great, a mouse" rather than me hitting the ceiling.

Of course, had I been standing six inches closer the mouse would have fallen on my head, and I have no idea how I would have reacted to that!

Apricot's reactions are far faster than mine, and he knew what was up the curtain, so he was on the mouse at once. He grabbed it and took it to his special place, which is a piece of carpet in the living room no different than any other piece of carpet, but that's where he takes the feathers to play with them (if he can get ahold of them for long enough) and that's where he took the mouse, carrying it in his mouth.

Then he dropped it and began bopping it on the head (and probably other parts of the body--mice are awfully small, really) and it made all kinds of squeaky noises in response. When it stopped moving and squeaking, he lost interest. I could have told him it was only pretending, since the whole incident didn't last long at all.

But he let go of it, and it scooted off behind the litter box's box. ACK!

No, no, no, we are not losing track of this mouse! You're supposed to kill it, Apricot, what kind of hunter are you, anyway? It was headed toward the computer desk, and I had a sudden vision of the mouse plunging into the nest of wires behind the desk, and Apricot lunging in after it, and the chaos that would ensue. Not a good mental image. 

So I started moving furniture, pulling the box away from the door, and the square storage units beside it away from the wall, and blocking the mouse's exit so it had to turn around and go back. Apricot was put off by the moving furniture thing ... until the moving furniture thing produced the mouse, all running and back to squeaking again (once he caught it, carried it to his spot, and started pounding on it again anyway). 

Repeat the whole Apricot losing interest when the mouse pretends to be dead. The mouse runs off away from both of us this time, and manages to hide in the foyer behind the storage units there (yes, I lack closet space, moving on).

I actually thought about getting the phone from the bedroom, and taking pictures, and decided against it, since I'd have to leave the two of them (Apricot and the mouse) unsupervised. Yet at some point, here, I think, I went to the bedroom to grab my glasses, plus turning the lights on everywhere I could get to. I don't actually remember getting my glasses, or deciding to. In fact, later when I stepped outdoors to go for my morning walk, I was surprised I had them on!

Anyway, that was later. Right now I came back from getting my glasses (if this, indeed, was the point at which I got them) and moved storage units in the foyer, hoping the mouse was still there. It was, and Apricot got it again. 

But now it got away before he got it in his mouth to carry it, and it went behind the bookshelf on the other side of the foyer wall. That's a 200 pound bookshelf. When it's empty. And it's far from empty. No way can I move that. And I can see that mouse behind it, outlined against the light! What to do, what to do ... the swiffer! It's long enough and narrow enough. So I went and fetched it.

(The first time I ever used the swiffer I scared Apricot because I forgot he'd never seen it. When he saw me coming from the kitchen with it now, he looked a little apprehensive. But then I did things he appreciated with it, as you will see, and I think he may be getting along with the swiffer much better now.)

By this time Apricot had gotten the hang of tandem hunting. The minute I went to one side of the bookshelf with the swiffer, he positioned himself on the other side, ready and waiting for the mouse to emerge. Which it did, prodded by my handy cleaning tool.

Somehow after more chases and tandem hunting, we ended up in the kitchen, all three of us. Apricot aimed the mouse toward the dining room part of the kitchen, and it went behind the rolltop desk and filing cabinet that are there. When I pulled those away from the wall I found where the mouse has been staying (lots of mouse poop to clean up later). 

The mouse actually lost Apricot by climbing up the cat tree. Apricot is very much a floor kitty and didn't think to look up. However, the mouse didn't lose me and I made it go back down by shaking the tree a little. You know, possibly Apricot didn't look up simply because he knew we were hunting it together, and to him, I was in charge of the tall stuff, being tall myself.

It was readily becoming apparent to me that Apricot had no intention of killing the mouse. He planned to keep it and play with it whenever he got bored, expecting it to stay put like his other toys do. I think at some point he made a decision that he was fed good tasting food, available all the time, and there was no need to waste a fun toy on things like food.

I was not about to leave the house with a loose mouse. I did consider for a second trying to keep it, but even in a large box with smooth sides that it couldn't get out of, Apricot would simply pick it up and carry it out to his special spot. So, no, the mouse had to go.

But I was also not about to kill it myself. I think mice are cute*, and I didn't want to kill it. I didn't really want Apricot to kill it either--I just didn't think I could catch it. I did consider opening the door and letting Apricot chase it outside, somehow shutting the door after the mouse left but before Apricot did ... yeah, I thought that plan was about as brilliant as you do. Then I'd be chasing a cat in the dark by myself rather than chasing a mouse in a brightly lit house, helped by a cat who was built for catching mice.

However, the mouse was getting slow from being knocked around and batted into the carpet so many times, and I thought perhaps there was a good chance I could catch it. In my fingers. By the tail. I'm not quite sure why I thought this plan was any better.

The mouse was running back and forth under the circular dining room table, trapped between Apricot on one side and myself on the other. By now the mouse had figured out we were both in on the hunting. It would hesitate when between Apricot and myself, and before it decided to run perpendicular to both of us, there was a moment of stillness. In addition, it kept running up onto the thick rectangle of foam I have on the floor under the table to rest my feet on.

I pulled the foam toward me, paralyzing the mouse with the sudden movement of the floor beneath its feet. This moment was where I could catch the tail between my fingers. And so it was. Only the split second I had a grip on the tail, I let go with this uncontrolled atavistic reaction of "mouse, ew!"

I was quite put out with myself, as catching it had been difficult enough, and now I had to do it twice.

Believe it or not, I managed to catch it by the tail again, (the foam block trick didn't work twice, but I still got the mouse again) and this time I didn't let go. I felt rather satisfied with myself as I held it up. No wonder cats like to catch mice. The accomplishment is quite thrilling.

Only I had visions of it climbing up its own tail and biting and scratching me.

Did you know mice freeze when held by their tails? Maybe it was just this mouse. But I was very glad of it, since this meant I wasn't going to get clawed up by a notorious carrier of disease. 

I showed it to Apricot, who quite honestly didn't seem to believe that the thing I held from my fingers was the mouse. I showed him that I was throwing it out the door. I tossed it as far as I could; it landed halfway between my house and the next one. I do hope it survives and tells all its mousy friends that this is a baaaaad house and not to go in there!

Shutting the door, I turned around, to see an eager kitty face. "Okay, where did it go now? Let's go find it!" Um, Apricot, I just threw it Outside. You saw me do it. (He didn't believe me.)

Even when I came back from my walk he still didn't believe the mouse was really gone. He'd been having so much fun! And so had I, really. It was fun hunting with him. Pity I had to be sensible and get rid of the mouse. (Don't worry, I scrubbed my hands quite thoroughly with cleanser after I shut the door from throwing the mouse out. And then scrubbed the floor with a clorox wipe where the mouse had been nesting.)

Evidence showed that he'd been chasing it for some time before I got up; including across the mantel where he'd never been before. He'd knocked off the lightest thing on the mantel--the cardboard tube that holds the extra feathers. It's capped, so no big deal.

It does account for all the squeaking this morning before I got up. I thought it was Apricot again (he does this before my alarm goes off sometimes) and I refused to get up, as usual. But my sleep-fuzzed state probably didn't do a good job of distinguishing between Apricot's squeaks and the mouse. Or possibly, just possibly, Apricot was trying to tell me that something exciting was happening and I should come out and help!

This afternoon: a happy cat

Interesting postscript: Tonight Apricot spent the time I ate supper on the floor under the dining room table, all stretched out and hot and tired from chasing Da Bird (we do that right before supper). He's never stayed in the kitchen the whole time I ate, and he certainly never stayed under the table at my feet (technically he was on the floor next to the foam block that my feet were on, but whatever). Perhaps all that chasing about under the table made him more comfortable being there. In any case, it was nice to spend the extra time with him.

*Mice are cute, I think. Mice are also one of the primary causes of house fires when they get into the walls and chew on wires and cause shorts. So, I don't want a mouse in my house.