The Tale of Despereaux

So, our cat Cherry is not your typical cat. She was abandoned by her mother, hand-raised by humans, and has some psychological disorder that causes her to lick all the fur off of her underside; but that's not all. She also is not a good mouser. Not that she can't catch mice, she can, she just doesn't know what to do with them after she catches them. The first instance of mice-catching happened when we lived in El Paso. It was on a Saturday morning, Chris and I were still in bed and the kids went into the backyard. All of a sudden they came running upstairs saying, "Cherry and the mouse are in love!" We laughed and explained that the mouse probably did not see it that way. I went downstairs expecting to find Cherry with a dead mouse, but sure enough, she was just hugging the poor creature.

Yesterday while we were all outside working in the yard, I noticed that Cherry had ventured outside and was prowling in the tall grass. I commented that she would probably find a mouse, bring it inside, lose it, and then I would have to catch it (this has already happened twice before). Later, as I was cooking dinner, Jared informed me that there was a mouse under the couch in the basement. The girls and I all joined Jared downstairs to try to catch the mouse. When I lifted the couch it ran to our food storage area, which unfortunately has many bags of bulk goods not yet canned. We knew that we did not want the mouse to spend even one night near our food so we had to come up with a plan to catch it. The first thing Jared did was get some cheese so we could lure the mouse out with it, needless to say - it didn't work. Then, we put Cherry under the cabinet where the mouse was. She just looked at it, waiting for it to move, but it just cowered in the corner and she lost interest in a toy that didn't scurry. Next we decided to employ Chris in helping to move the cabinets. This meant unloading all the canned goods that were on the shelves. Unfortunately as soon as we moved the cabinet, the sneaky creature was gone and we couldn't figure out where it went. We decided that we'd have to buy a mouse trap, but in the meantime Chris and the kids wanted to finish watching the movie they'd started the night before. It is a pretty funny coincidence that the movie was "The Tale of Despereaux," which is not only about a mouse, but also has a couple great chase scenes when the humans are trying to capture the rat. So, while they were watching the movie, they noticed that Cherry was playing with something and realized that it was the mouse! The chase was on. The details get a little fuzzy from here, but suffice it to say that aside from throwing carving knives, the scene was very close to the chase scene in the movie, complete with the classic "I have it" and then opening your hands to find that the elusive critter has escaped once more.

In the end, the mouse was caught and returned to his home in the tall grass. And what have we learned from this adventure? Not to let the cat outside and...we need to make an appointment with the cannery to get our bulk foods canned. The good thing is that I'd been wanting to reorganize the food storage, now with empty shelves and the canned food all over the basement floor, it's the perfect opportunity.