For several months now we have been enduring a mouse plague. Not heat, nor cold, nor freezing ice have slowed the little blighters down, and Esther and Smidgen have barely managed to keep them at bay. Tonight, there is a mouse in the loungeroom. Esther has finally caught it, and is going through the (rather lengthy and distasteful) process of killing it. But before all that it was one for one and all. Firstly, Smidgen knocked all the carefully stacked firewood across the floor, causing the dog to leap up and try to play fetch with the logs. Finally got everyone calmed down again, and the wood re-stacked and settled down to my dinner. While eating my dinner I noted that Esther was sitting, staring at the wood-stack so carefully that she had failed to notice the mouse emerge, scurry along the face of the fireplace, bury itself in the fur between her carefully placed front feet, turn around and return to the woodheap.
Nothing like an alert cat I always say.
Then Shadow also realised that there was a mouse to be had and decided anything a cat can do, a 30+kilo dog can do better, so for a while there we had all three of them converging on the mouse (who was apparently feeling suicidal by this stage) and banging their noses together while the mouse continued on its way. Since Esther caught it, Smidgen has retired in high dudgeon to the bed, the dog is watching activities with great interest, and Esther is providing me with a blow-by-blow commentary on her hunting expertise, in the form of a series of 'clever me' trills and grunts of exertion.
Not sure how much longer i can take this ... But I am blowed if I will rescue the mouse and leave it to breed yet another generation to add to the plague ....
