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.