The Pet Wars Are Not Over!

Well, the mouse to cat ratio in the house is down to 1:1.

Yep. Another mouse has been stalked, caught and killed around here.

R.I.P. Bubbles.

I’m starting to think maybe mice aren’t a good pet when you have a predatory feline in the house as well…

Okay, I admit, I thought that from the beginning.

(See my previous post about what happened to the other mouse here, if you want.)

This most recent mouse execution was the result of a long-term campaign on the part of the cat. For several months he’s been hanging around the cage in ET’s room, especially at night, working on a plan of attack. Often she’s awakened to find the cat sitting on top of the glass aquarium the mouse lived in, just watching. Periodically he would wake her up by slamming himself into the plastic cover, and she’d chase him off.

She complained to me about it.

ET: Why does Kitty want to eat my mouse?
Me: Well, he’s a predator. He can’t help wanting to eat a mouse.
ET: But, he has his own food in his dish. He should eat that.
Me: Think of it this way. Suppose YOU were the pet, and we fed you nice healthy food every day in your dish. But we kept a delicious treat sitting in the middle of the room in an impenetrable glass box. Just to look at. And then we said, “Forget about that lovely-looking cheeseburger in the cage. Go eat your bowl of salad!”
ET: Oh.

Anyways, it turns out the glass box was not as impenetrable as we’d thought.

Last weekend, while ET was sleeping over at a friend’s house, Kitty made his move. In the morning the plastic cover on the aquarium was cracked down the middle and the mouse was gone.

I guess one of the times the cat body-slammed the cover it finally gave way. Persistence pays off.

So that’s it for poor Bubbles.

Now the cat has been watching the other mouse cage in GG and Boo’s room…

BTW the above silhouette of the dead mouse is available on a mouse pad at etsy.com. If you're into that sort of thing...