mouse mates

Me and Mandycat have something in common. We’re both mouse catchers. Her catch this morning is the foto above.

Mine’s a different story. Took the empty dishes out to the kitchen and as I get ready to rinse them, I see a small gray fur mass trying unsuccessfully to jump out of the sink. I spray the mouse with water with one hand to keep it disoriented while I reach for a jar with the other. I easily trap the mouse only to be caught myself with “Now what?” I can’t kill it in cold blood — the poor thing’s frightened and wet and I know how it feels because I’ve been there myself. I briefly consider giving it to Mandycat, but that’s the same as me killing it. So even though my leg’s hurting, I walk it down three flights of stairs to toss it outside, but stop because throwing a wet mouse out into the freezing cold is something I very definitely would not want done to me, so I take it on down to the basement and let it go. I figure there’re three floors between it and us and the first floor has four cats and even if it gets back up here our cat will kill it. But at least for this moment, my hands are bloodless — the rest is up to fate and chance.