A Mouse Tale/Tail

So weeks go by following the middle of the night capture, torture and maiming incident which I have Pollyanna'ed myself into truly believing was a) an isolated incident (This mouse was clearly a loner. A recluse. No friends, no family. A party of one) and b) an event which culminated in the poor lone mouse's eventual death (which of course took place outside of my house and certainly not inconveniently in between my walls).

So it is this ignorant optimism I have to blame when three weeks later, I am awakened in the twinkling, half lit hours of dawn by the same woeful sounding throaty moan that haunted my sleep for days after Meeces to Pieces, Episode 1.

After realizing the moaning was not actually coming from inside my head where I was enjoying a dream about a big outdoor party, with live entertainment, that, wait a minute, that vocalist sounds like a cat...I sat bolt upright in bed. And yes, in a flop sweat and with a racing pulse.

I look down at Trinket, who is looking up at me from the floor in apparent bewilderment that I am overreacting already.

I expect to see a mouse dangling by its tail from her mouth, but she is licking her chops sans mouse.

But there in the dawn's early light, meant only to illuminate the Star Bangled Banner, and not the gore fest that I am about to deal with, I can see a little roundish dark blob on the light carpet. And the blob is not moving. And it is, even in the hazy lighting, and with my limited ability to see, evidently too small to be the preferred cat toy, the leopard print catnip mouse.

I secure my ponytail, lest it become a distraction or a screening problem in what activities I anticipate, and turn on my bedside light (again, surgical grade lighting). And there on the floor, now being softly chewed on by my darling kitty, is a pathetic, wet, small gray, lifeless mouse. It looks exactly like the one from Episode 1. But what do I know?

All together now: EEEEeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwww!!!!!

I put on the slippers I had schlepped around in the night before and turn on even more lights. Trinket is now prancing around her little dead friend very proudly.

I will never understand animals.

I try a little animal psychology, and choke out feigned praise. "Good girl, Trinket! Mommy is so proud of you! How about a treat?"

And like that, we are down the stairs and in the kitchen where I am immediately heaping pieces of smoked deli turkey into her bowl...enough to keep her purring and distracted for a while.

I need to act fast. Hil and Pat are asleep for only a few minutes longer. I can only imagine the drama. Hil can't share space with a bug. Imagine her reaction to a gruesome little dead thing!

I grab a grocery bag, the plastic environmentally unfriendly kind, and then one more to double it up. I also take a piece of unopened junk mail in a stiff over sized envelope and then race back upstairs as quietly as possible.

I kneel, open the bag as best I can, and then artfully flip the little rigor mortised thing into the bag and tie a double knot.

But on its way into its little plastic coffin, I noticed one thing.

Mr. Mouse has no tail.

And as I run downstairs to put the mouse and the bag in the can that holds the morning trash at the curb, I am skeeving.

Where oh where is the disembodied tail going to turn up???