One down, ????? to go.

Every year at this time, we get a few mice in the house. I’m sure it’s a consequence of choosing to live surrounded by woods and I guess I can't blame them. Cold, burrow in a frost-covered log for the next three months or a nice, warm house with two kids who leave a trail of O's cereal everywhere they go. Hmmmm . . . tough choice.

And like last year, my cat seem to be hopeless at catching them. I see her, sitting with her nose pressed against a grate or sitting like a statue trying to will herself to fit under the refrigerator, but she rarely hits pay dirt.

So, we set our humane traps and every couple of nights we get one and we promptly march it out the door, head waaaaay across the yard, release it and hope it doesn’t find itself back in. (I wish I could play Wild Kingdom and put mini trackers them to see how many actually do find their way back. That could certainly prompt us to reevaluate our catch-and-release strategy.)

But anyway . . . today, while playing outside with the girls, the cat came happily bounding out of the woods from precisely the spot where we deposit the evicted rodents. At a distance, I could see she had something in her mouth. Hoping it wasn’t a bird or a rabbit, I ran toward her.

As she got closer, I could plainly see that it was a dead mouse. I’m willing to bet it’s one of the ones we dumped out that way in the last few days. What makes me think that?

She was extra proud. Prancing around and purring and rolling herself over for a belly scratch I could just imagine her thoughts: And you thought you could escape me. Fool! Now you’ll pay. Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!

And in my imagination she sounded exactly like Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. Which is no surprise because I’ve seen that about eighty-bazillion times in the last two months.

So I gave her a scratch on the head and left her to her prey. Maybe now that she’s got the taste of it, she’ll work a little harder when she’s inside.

No more Ms. Nice Guy!

So I'm working my butt off to get my house ready for Thursday, when 23 people will show up expecting succulent turkey, an array of fabulous side dishes, freshly baked breads and delectable pies. To make for a nice atmosphere, I am painting trim, hanging pictures, scrubbing floors and carving gourds so that I can stuff them with fresh flowers and turn them into lovely centerpieces. And, of course, I'm obsessing about the food, all so that I can attempt to create as close to a Rockwellian Thanksgiving as possible for my guests.

Which is why the little trail of mouse poo I spied on floor near the fridge today is seriously bumming me out.

You know, I love animals. I try to be very Zen in my approach to other life forms. Instead of squashing insects, I operate my own six-legged catch-and-release program. But mouse poop? On my floor? On my perfect little family Thanksgiving? Is un-FUCKING-acceptable.

I have tried to be fair to the MICE living in my home this fall. The humane trap has been clicking away day and night and each mouse that is caught is driven down the road to the golf course and released without harm. But those days are quickly coming to an end. Because I? Have HAD it!! I'm *thisclose* to picking up a gallon of poison on my way home today and killing them all. How dare they invade my house and leave their dirty, disease ridden feces on my kitchen floor.

This is a very big change for me. I am not a killer, so maybe this is some type of temporary insanity? But in any event, I laughed and laughed when I stumbled upon this earlier today. We are of one mind Bitter Betty. One mind.

I think my cat is reading my blog

Why? Because she totally caught a mouse last night. I spied her in the kitchen pressed as close to the fridge as possible. Every now and then she'd flatten her belly to the floor like a snake and stab her paw under the fridge.

I thought, "Bah! She'll never get it," and went to bed.

Not five minutes later she's at the foot of my bed meowing a very different meow than normal. Then I hear the bell from her collar tinkle and a soft thump on the floor. More meowing. More tinkling. More thumping. So I turn on the light.

And there is BadCat, tossing the carcass of poor Mr. Mouse into the air.

The thing is? We also caught one in the humane trap Saturday night. Mark drove that one across town and let it go in a field.

So now I'm wondering just how many mice are living in our house?!?! I'm not 100% I want to know, but we will reset the trap tonight. And maybe get ourselves another cat to work the day shift.

Yo! Cat! How about a little help here?

Our mouse is back. Actually, I'm not 100% sure it ever left. It may have just retreated to the attic. A few weeks back I got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night and as I lay in bed I could hear the faintest scrittch scrittch followed by an even fainter thunk thunk coming from the ceiling above me. It kept me up for at least an hour and the whole time I'm lying there thinking, "you've got to be fucking kidding me? I'm being kept awake by a MOUSE?" I finally fell asleep and have given very little thought to our resident rodent since.

Until tonight when Mark yelled from the kitchen, "I think we still have a mouse."

Me from the living room, "why do you say?"

"Because it's swimming in the dog's water bowl."

Eh?!?

Sure enough, there it was - middle of the water bowl - submerged to it's little neck, desperately trying to gain some traction to propel itself to freedom. And then it did. About .00067 seconds before Mark could slap a newspaper on top of the bowl. And all the while our cat was sleeping soundly in the bedroom, completely oblivious.

So our handy dandy humane mousetrap is loaded up with peanut butter, ready to go. Because Lord knows, we can't count on the cat to catch it.