MindSpinner

He brought it for gift to me, after a clattering in the kitchen, brought it limp, its gray tail hanging. He was not murderous with blood on his white teeth or death in his green eye. He had a furry toy to share instead and set it down to play. He expected me to be as charmed as he, and not to yelp when his gift, lightly dropped, up and fled. My reaction proved a puzzlement. He made a game of catch and release, batting the panicked mouse with his white paw, catching it up in his teeth and letting it go again and again, while I tried to conjure a means of removing the mouse alive. Picking up the cat with the mouse yet in his jaws and taking the two of them outside was not an option given that the cat would likely let it drop. Corraling the cat would unleash the mouse to make a beeline for my closet door, hide out in some crevice and live to raise its young in my shoe. Nothing would work - the mouse was far too quick for me alone. “Mouse,” I explained, “you are too scampery to save.”

When the chase retired to the bathroom, I closed the door. What would be would be.

A half an hour later, no mouse. As for the cat, he’d no doubt toyed the mouse at last to death and then saw nothing left to do but dine - as a practical matter. He napped content on the bed beside me for a time while I contemplated my culpability in the matter of the death of a small brown mouse. I haven’t yet pulled out the stove, you see, found the hole, and stuffed it tight with steel wool. No, I have sat here, instead, and sounded words like piano keys, in search of a tune.

For his part, the cat has now wakened, stretched, and dropped to the floor. He patrols the edges of the cabinet in the hall, probing that inch of darkness between furniture and floor, flicking his tail expectantly. The game is still afoot, you see. There’s a mouse in the house.

Perhaps the giftee scampers slower now, and I can catch it and put it out.