I am living in, as my cousin calls it, a Tom & Jerry episode.  If you don’t know who these two are, you definitely did not grow up in the 80s.  Anyhow, so this is how the live episode rolls…. 

I’m trying to catch up on laundry–which is a fools’ game, I know.  I pull a wet comforter out of the wash, hear something hit the bottom of the washer as I transfer said comforter to the dryer.  I wash toys quite regularly, so I assume it’s a toy.  Oh… no… that would be just too overly simplified for my life in a house full of men.  What drops out is a mouse.  Not of the deceased variety, but of the newly squeaky clean live variety.  Oh yes, I did see my life flash before my eyes… momentarily.  Cute as they may be, I like to see them from a very far distance…you know, like in the talons of an owl swooping overhead.  So after I jump out of the laundry room saying a few expletives, my husband tries to get ME to take the bloody thing out of the washer and toss it outside to freedom.  Hey, the little fella deserves a 2nd chance after surviving a run through the wash… but I’m not about to be the one to give it to him.  

So while I am putting the younger two to bed, the dear husband decides to use a set of tongs to pick up the mouse, who is still running the new exercise wheel, and set him free. Free to roam the neighborhood, until the next cat catches him and brings him home.  Not sure of his fate, the mouse decides to make his own fate, and squirms his wee little way out of the tongs… and back INTO the house.  Apparently, he likes the new digs.  The cat, with impeccable timing, happens to be at the door and thus gets tossed into the coat closet with the mouse.  

Now, I’m thinking the cat will actually kill the mouse this time, instead of just toy with it. Two nights later, just as i’m getting comfortable that the mouse has been eaten, I hear the boys screech that the mouse is in the corner of the family room. … Which was quite the coincidence, since the boys were watching a kids prank show that had to do with .. … rats in the kitchen.  Karma is such a .. .. well, yeah.   

Now, seriously, this cat is about to do some serious outside time for not being willing enough to catch the mouse… and kill it.  So it’s been a few days. … We now have a German exchange student staying with us for a while…  and what did she see this morning on the way to the bathroom??

Yep. .. that friggin’ mouse. … I am going to have some serious nightmares.  I keep expecting this mouse to jump out of the shoe bin… out from under a pile of junk in the coat closet… from under the couch.. …  you know, anywhere that needs a good, deep clean (like my entire house).  I think this is my cat showing serious disrespect to the person who feeds him, who lets him in when his cat window is closed… and maybe, just maybe, Brutus is a little upset that his new bedtime buddy was away an entire weekend without the prior written cat consent. 

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Just because I could use a little relaxation about now…..

So, in the meantime… while the cat plays with his new toy in the middle of the night… one of these mornings I expect to either hear the little squeak of a mouse under my foot in the middle of the night bathroom run…   or wake up to the cat telling me how proud I should be that he finally…FINALLY killed his favorite toy. ..