12/11 Claire - A little mouse with clogs on

Great! A day in London, a delayed train, Ian in Sheffield, a live mouse running around the kichen and two cats too stupid to see it. Nice.

I try the obvious mouse catching technique… hold the cat by the waist, thrust cats head towards area mouse is hiding, cat picks up mouse in teeth, chuck cat and attached mouse into the garden. Great plan however the cat seems oblivious to the mouse 10cms from her nose and turns to me, feet dangling freely, as if to say “Hiya, had a good day? I’ve missed you… Meow..”. This is the cat that is a country killing machine and brings in stuff every other day to eat… what is it about indoor hunting that seems to pass her by?

Ian calls within a couple of mins of me spotting the little critter so he kindly talks me through my options

1) Don’t feed the cats, go into the lounge, shut the door, go to bed and assume the cats will find it and catch it overnight
2) Catch the mouse with a bowl and release back into the garden


Is he ****ing joking? Then between my bouts of hysteria he says “sorry love, can I call you back later… my meal’s just arrived”. Yes, I decide, he’s taking the piss.

So, I need to move the cat beds and the sheepskin rug they sit on top of as the mouse is clearly now underneath. My cunning plan for ensuring that this act doesn’t result in mouse running over feet is to lie, belly down, across the kitchen table. I can reach down from this position and grab the edge of each of the beds and the rug, move them and not be anywhere close to the floor in case of a mouse escape attempt.

As I lift the rug in one corner with two fingers not only do I see the live mouse running behind the snowboards balanced in the corner but they have also left me a dead mouse under the rug to deal with. Great. The dead mouse gets flung out of the garden and in this time I see the live mouse taking tentative steps out of it’s hiding place. Right time to move, be a brave girl and do something about it. I take a large clear measuring jug, climb back onto the kitchen table and lie across it, reach down towards the mouse and quickly drop the jug upside down on top of it. Hoorar. Now, what the hell do I do now? Ok, piece of card, under jug, jug back the right way around, into front garden… and release!

Clinton seemed to have a new found level of respect for me after this, he followed me around making lots of loving meow noises, aw.

My mistake… he just wanted me to get the Whiskers out!!