Cats are apex predators and mine are at the top of that apex. I will spare you images of the discoveries I have made in the last couple of days, but let me list them because this is way more than usual:
- MOLE. Cats do not eat them, so this was a merely a plaything. I put its body outside. Soft fur, cute teeth and toes.
- MOUSE HEAD & GUTS. Beryl woke Tod up at 2:25 am and he woke me up at 2:30 for help. I opened exteriors doors, chased her upstairs and downstairs and finally got her out in the tiled doma with the mouse. She left the head and some random parts for me.
- CAT VOMIT with mouse parts. Someone (Maura?) puked up an unsavory meal of kibble and fur under the living room table in the 20 minutes I was preparing dessert the other night. Commentary on my cooking?
- MOUSE STOMACH. Early yesterday morning on the cats’ favorite green carpet, I found a stomach or whatever that stretched-out white curlicue is that cats don’t eat.
- MOLE. Yesterday morning, a little later, a fat little mole plaything tried to escape from Beryl into the pocket of my emergency bag in the doma. I carried him and the bag outside. He backed out quick as a wink and dug himself into the garden. Live free, little friend.
- MOUSE STOMACH #2. This morning, I found another whatever that organ is on the green carpet. I also learned what blood looks like on the beeswaxed cedar floor – it’s black. I also learned that Oxydol is a bad choice to try to clean blood off of wood. It leaves it darkly stained – possibly permanently (see photo above). Geesh.
- DECAPITATED MOUSE. Going upstairs to empty my trash bin, I spotted a suspicious smear of reddish brown on the carpet under the slanted ceiling near my desk. It was a decapitated mouse. It’s stomach was also there, so not related to the earlier find.
- RAT. As I stepped around the desk to remove the mouse carcass, I found a rat! A big Norwegian rat with a long tail lying upside down on the floor next to the ethernet cable. One bite mark in its leg. Was there an epic battle between that mouse and rat that ended badly for both of them? Or is the space next to my desk a new Killing Field?
Anyway this morning’s trash had a lot of dead animals and their parts. Gross.
UPDATE! I received a poem from Jenny after she read this post. It is so good I snorted when reading it.
poem from your cat (which one is anyone’s guess, but probably Beryl the huntress?)
Rattus Rattus turned to scholar tried to read, then heard the holler of my mrowling by the desk. Fightus Biteus, fit and scramble squeals and nips and skimble-skamble the final outcome here is zero pest! Rattus rattus, laid to restus. in the trash with other pestus*. * Their parts and bits and organ meats, which cats like us who are discrete in our tastes refuse to eat. -- Jennifer Hill
