After a pretty long day at the office and knowing that I had to wake up at 6AM the next morning (long story, but in short it was the only time we could go on a site visit for our VCT Challenge day this Saturday), I collapsed into bed at 12:30 only to be woken up again four hours later. Shuffling, bumping, moving, "What the hell is that?" I wondered. "Is someone in the house? Did we forget to lock the door?" Three of my four housemates were also gone (two at Vic Falls, one at the refugee settlement), so that made the bumps in the night all the more ominous. Eyes burning from lack of sleep, I threw on my glasses, reached for my headlamp, and ducked out from beneath my mosquito net only to find...Ping going crazy on the floor by the base of my bed. Sometimes we call him ninja cat when he randomly climbs up sides of couches, pounces from one piece of furniture to another, and gets all wide-eyed and playful, but this was another beast altogether. He was jumping in midair for apparently no reason. Oh wait, maybe he was swatting at something. I flipped on the light. There he was, playing with a dead mouse. Tossing it up, catching it himself, pouncing on the immobile creature, totally frenzied and giddy. All of this on top of my purse, my running shoes, my computer case. Ew. I tried to kcock Ping out of the way but he kept on running back. I don't know, maybe the mouse was made out of catnip or something. Instead I ran into the kitchen to get a plastic bag, finally pushed Ping out of the room, picked up the (kind of cute, in retrospect) mouse with two plastic bags (one crunched up so I wouldn't feel the body - I'm telling you, I don't know why it made me squeamish!), and tossed it in the garbage before letting Ping back in the room. An upside of the encounter? Ping is doing his job. And I was so tired that the whole event kind of feels like a dream. The downside? There was a dead mouse all over my stuff. And I had to clean it up. No big deal though, next time it will come as less of a surprise, right?
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Ninja Ping
I don't exactly consider myself a squeamish person - bugs don't usually gross me out, I'll brush away (most) spiders with the sweep of a hand, and I've been consistently cleaning up Ping's (our cat's) half-eaten poisonous lizards/barf that he so conscientiously leaves around the house for us every few weeks. But two nights ago that patience was tested.
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I actually laughed through that whole blog mainly because the cats name is ping and your description of the story. totally gross though, I understand why it grossed you out! Good work Ping! xo
ReplyDeleteHi Maxime. It's Leila. I really enjoy reading your blog from frigid Alberta where it's -21 with the wind chill and snowing. I had a similar mouse experience recently. Last Sunday, I had my daughters over to my house in Hemmingford where I now live. The Sunday family dinner is an all too infrequent occurence as I spend eight months of the year in Calgary. Although I have the two dogs and the horse out West with me to keep me company, Don has adopted two cats, two country cats who are excellent mousers and rather deadly killers of small varmints. (Not to mention carriers of fleas and ticks.) Often, there will be a dead dird, mouse or chipmunk waiting for me on my fancy wool rug in the morning. When the impulse strikes them, they will drag the dead animal around the floor, smearing blood everywhere. Anais does not like cats. She claims to be allergic to them but I believe it's just an excuse for generalized feline loathing. So back to the infrequent family dinner - somewhere between the red pepper soup and the apricot chicken, one of the cats delivered a dead mouse right at Anais' feet. You can imagine there was shrieking and I had to use the two plastic bag method of mouse removeal. Anyway, it was ironic - that a girl who regularly dissects dead people should have such an over-the-top reaction to a mouse. And yet it was oddly reassuring that no matter how children move on in their lives, when they are with their parents, nothing really changes. Stay well sweetie and I am tremendously impressed by the work you've chosen to do.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that Anais can handle a dead body and not a dead mouse is baffling. There's something wrong with that picture!
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