Queen of the Mousers--Update

We have seen not hide nor hair, nor nasty little rat-tail, of the mouse that so rudely interrupted our rest the other night. Our huntress cat, Teddi, spent that night in our bedroom, but she wanted to go back out with the farm cats later the next morning. I guess she preferred their company to ours. In the house, she is a cat who must obey the humans' rules, but among the cats she is "queen"!

Mouse in the house!

The other night, I went to bed and then I heard something scratching at the door across the hall. I opened the door and out ran a mouse, directly coming at me. Why do they DO that? Here is this huge animal standing in front of him, and he charged me! Of course, it worked! The huge animal screamed, repeatedly, and ran in and jumped up on her bed. By this time, the huge animal's mate was awake, going after the mouse. (Bet the mouse hadn't counted on that.)

"Get a cat!" Tim yelled.

I went down and opened the door to the enclosed porch where the farm cats spend the nights. Since I didn't have shoes on, I didn't want to walk out there.

"Teddi!" I called the queen, the alpha female, the huntress. All of the other cats swarmed around the door, but Teddi stayed where she was. They cuddle together to sleep in several cardboard boxes, and Teddi obviously had the box she wanted. She was not going to get up. I called, and motioned for her to some, and called again. Finally, she relented and gave up her bed to come to me.

The mouse was last seen running into the bathroom, so Tim and Teddi did a search. No mouse.

"I want her to sleep with us," I said. With a scary mouse in the house, I wasn't sleeping without my Teddi Bear. Teddi purred us to sleep.

The irony is that her sweet reward of living indoors will end when she succeeds in catching the mouse! Well, maybe not. She knows where the litter box is and is fairly well-behaved. 

Sassy, the kitten she raised, is our one house cat. We couldn't put her on the mouse because Sass has never hunted a thing in her life. One day, I gave Sassy a piece of deli roast beef and she took it to her kittens, calling them as cats do when they've hunted up a critter. Sassy probably wouldn't know what to do with live prey--maybe she would bring it to me when I'm in bed. No, Sass is not the hunter!

For now, Teddi is enjoying being inside. She has had breakfast and has discovered that sitting on a warm radiator beats sitting in a cardboard box. If that mouse gets ANYWHERE NEAR the radiator, he's done.

Ham it up for Christmas!

We had a very nice Christmas season. Jeremy and Ashley spent Christmas eve with her parents, and then we had planned to spend Christmas day at my sister's house in the middle of the state. The roads were bad in Dad's area, so we postponed the gathering until Sunday.

I had to scramble to come up with a last minute holiday dinner here. I knew we'd be having ham Sunday, but all I had that seemed "festive" was a ham. I figured we could have it twice in one week. Jeremy came downstairs as I was mixing up the hash brown potato casserole. He asked what we were having for dinner.

"We had ham yesterday at Ashley's," he said. "And, we had that kind of potato dish, too."  So, we had ham Thursday, Christmas day. 

Friday, we had leftovers of ham. Saturday, Jeremy and Ashley went to a party and the proud host had cooked (you guessed it), ham. 

Sunday dawned fairly clear throughout the state and we were all able to make the trip to Nancy's. And, of course, we had ham! It was good, though, and we brought home leftovers which I ate for lunch the next few days. 

If we are what we eat, ham I am!

Photo (L to R): Jeremy, Ashley, Nancy, Dad