Distracted Dad: Of Men And Mice

On the Friday of a recent bank holiday weekend, my wife had gone out and The Boy and Youngest(TM) were asleep. I was sitting down with a lovingly-cooked mushroom risotto when our cat – let’s call him Percy (after all, that’s his name) – came rushing in and was darting manically around my feet. A mad five minutes, I thought. Then I suddenly realised, while eating my meal at the dining table, below decks, our cat was chasing a mouse.

Now, if you’re of a nervous disposition, and you think Tom and Jerry is a true representation, look away now. Read something else. Watch a cartoon.

OK, so now I’ve filtered my readers down to the hardened psychopaths, I’ll continue.
Now normally when our cat has brought a mouse in, it’s dead. The poor things look like they’ve died of shock, and although Percy seems to be juggling with them or pushing them around, it’s like when a toddler pushes a toy car, and the toy car moves. It doesn’t mean it has a working engine.

Except this time, it was very much alive. I gripped Percy to give the mouse a chance, but Percy wriggled free, so the mouse darts over by the sofa (well, sofa bed actually – that’s going to crop up later), and when I grab Percy again and put him outside, the mouse disappears under the sofa.

Have I done the right thing? Am I being mean, and if so, to whom? Am I interfering with the Circle of Life? Not too sure, but I can’t really enjoy my (vegetarian) risotto while an animal is eaten within spitting distance. And not by me.

I lift up the sofa bed and see a tail disappear up into the mechanism. I start taking off the cushions and then unfolding the metal frame, but then wonder whether I’m going to unwittingly crush a mouse, and anyway I’m getting hungry so I abandon that job, and eat my risotto. Having previously kept hamsters, I know that rodents are good at hiding and they’ll come out when they’re ready.

“If you think Tom and Jerry is a true representation, look away now. Read something else. Watch a cartoon.”

And yes, then I forgot about it, until the next day when my wife asks why the cushions on the sofa are the wrong way around. Aha, I say, funny story, and this culminates in myself, The Boy and Youngest(TM) herding the mouse out from within the sofa bed and outside, while my wife offered advice from the kitchen. However, getting him outside feels like a rescue mission. I have heroically saved his life.

That was Saturday morning. We then went away overnight to Portsmouth. Before going, we had to set the Cat-O-Matic (I don’t think it’s actually called that), which is a battery-operated device for revealing food at set intervals so that a pet can survive while you’re away. A clever device, but one that makes me nervous, in that I’m relying on the freshness of an AA battery to keep a living creature (Percy) alive. Although, actually, I’m sure he’ll manage.

Portsmouth’s historic dockyard was really good – we saw the Mary Rose and HMS Victory – even though at times we had to break up the odd bit of warfare between the The Boy and Youngest(TM). Obviously, that’s quite normal, and it’s a parenting dilemma deciding to what extent you try and intervene. So here – if I wasn’t so tired – would be a magnificent metaphor about whether to interfere with the Circle of Life to link it up with the whole cat/mouse thing.

Anyway, we get back late on bank holiday Monday to see a dead mouse under the living room table.

Richard Hearn 2014
www.richardhearn.co.uk