Cobalt, as has already been pointed out before, is a goof (reason #43, #44). An incident this morning simply added to his not-so-hot reputation.
When I got up this morning, both cats were crouched down in the laundry room, facing towards the washing machine. Odd, since we'd moved their litterbox out of there, and they usually don't spend much time in there. I pointed it out to Elizabeth when she got up, and we agreed there was probably a bug they'd been chasing. (Note: Cobalt has a habit of pawing at bugs, but not really squashing them. He's injured moths and still let them get away.)
After Elizabeth went to work, Dorothy and I went back to the master bedroom to fold laundry. We were about 2/3 done when Cobalt and Rhodium strolled in. Cobalt had in his mouth what I took at first to be one of their toy mice. Then I realized it was too big, and just as I started wondering if it was a real mouse, he dropped it. Yes, it was real. Yes, it ran like holy hell for a wall, disappearing under & behind the dirty-laundry bags holder.
Great.
The cats got very excited, and were looking around at the dirty-laundry bags area. I made sure Dorothy was on the opposite side of the room, then yanked the bags & holder away from the wall. Yep, there was a big gray mouse crouched against the floorboard in the middle of the wall, frozen. Cobalt lunged in to grab at it, it ran, and I'm not sure what happened next. The mouse disappeared. It looked like he was heading towards the door into the master bathroom, but Cobalt and Rhodium were trying to pounce, then Cobalt was turning around and around trying to find the mouse. I went and put on shoes and gloves (not being sure, in the heat of the moment, if there was any concern about diseases from mice) and put Dorothy into the bathtub (from whence she can't quite escape - yet). Then I hunted all around the bedroom and bathroom trying to find the mouse. No luck.
The cats were focused on a corner under the sinks, but a search (and sticking a screwdriver through the tiny hole there) found nothing, and the hole just connected into the area the pocket door goes into. A search in there turned up nothing.
I spent much of the rest of the morning trying to find pet and child safe mouse traps, while dealing with a 17-month old girl who didn't like not being the complete center of attention.
Through the morning, the cats were really wound up playing with their toy mice. But Cobalt deserves some special title as "Most Ineffective Rodent Hunter" (although I guess he was good enough to have originally got it out from under the washing machine).
When I told Elizabeth about the ordeal later that day, I mentioned that the mouse looked pretty fat. She suggested it might be pregnant.
If Cobalt let a pregnant mouse get away, and the house is then infested with a litter, I might have to shave him bald as punishment.
Posted by Tom Nugent at August 3, 2005 08:54 PM