Eyeing the Intestines

A few nights ago I was amazed to discover a pile of viscera in the middle of my carpet. There were intestines, and a miniature liver, and other little bits and pieces all tucked inside that I couldn't really see.

My first thought was that Zsa Zsa had finally started vomiting up her own entrails, but these were far too small to have come from a cat. They were...mouse size.

As far as I know this is the sixth mouse that Zsa Zsa has caught. As though to express the changeability of her moods, every mouse is devoured in a totally different way; the first was left totally uneaten, the second was swallowed in a single gulp, the third was chewed and savoured in a leisurely way, the fourth was bitten into two pieces with only the top half eaten, the fifth was entirely devoured except for a tiny back foot...

...but this is the first time she's eaten everything BUT the entrails, which seems strange to me; why would she favour the fur and bones and tail, but leave the "choice bits" behind?

I wonder if there isn't some truth to that half-baked idea that cats sometimes treat humans as really useless kittens. Maybe Zsa Zsa left a pile of juicy mouse-organs for me because she thought I'd appreciate them, and she knows I could never catch a mouse if my life depended on it.

Even stranger, however, was how CLEAN and SELF-CONTAINED the viscera was. I've always assumed that such things were sticky and messy and gelatinous, but not THESE mouse guts; they were damp but coherent, a whole entity unto themselves, almost as though they could pull themselves back together and saunter off into the night.

I think it's wonderful that Zsa Zsa -- who now resembles Death's Own Pussycat -- still has the vigour to stalk, capture, and eat the resident mice.