Woman's best friend

The mice are completely out of control now. They're clever little buggars, too. We've tried baiting traps, they won't go for it. We've tried just about everything we could think of, short of cats in the house. Due to the nature of our cats' cat box challengedness, we threw them out years ago because we were tired of throwing away our pee soaked stuff. We tossed 3 couches, some area rugs, countless pieces of clothing and bedding, you name it. On Sunday night, I had completely had it. I actually chose to bring the cats in the house and risk pee in my brand new house, because I am exhausted from the mice gnawing on my night tables all night keeping me awake.

Sunday night, we closed Kitten in our room. She seems to be the psycho rodent killer of the two (although we do have evidence that Tigger, in his less rotund days, has caught and killed small animals s well). She seemed to be the obvious choice, albeit a tough one since unfortunately I think she's the culprit of our pee nightmares.

She was *so* happy to be in the house with the family again. She lost her psycho-skittish demeanor and rolled around on the bed making biscuits in the air and kneading everything in sight (this did include Nikolai, and he was not pleased). After an hour or two the little bold mouse poked his head out and decided to come get his evening's fiber from my night table. At the slightest noise in the corner Kitten was immediately on the prowl. She tore around the room, much like the tasmanian devil. She was whipping around corners, knocking everything off the night tables, tearing around under the bed. It was a relatively short time she spent in active pursuit of the unfortunate grey furball, but the time she did spend was frantic. At one point she was under the bed tearing around and I heard a great big THUNK. I think she bonked her head on the bed frame or something, because for a few minutes it was totally silent under there. I said to Matt "I think she knocked herself out."

Moments later she started meowing that special "Mommy, I have something dead for you, aren't you proud of me?" meow. She came out from under the bed and hopped up on my side near my shoulder, carrying the tiny mouse in her jaws. There's nothing quite like a dead animal offering from a loyal pet. There's also nothing quite like a LIVE animal offering from the same loyal pet. Unfortunately, this offering was the latter. She leaned her head over my shoulder and dropped the prize right on me. The mouse (giddy with freedom) scurried away down the length of the bed and dropped off the end of it. Kitten followed it with her eyes, sporting an "oh crap." look.

The mouse is still terrorizing. We brought her in the room again last night, to no avail. I think she's the key, though. She's the solution for which we've been searching.