Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Doctor Domestic and Missus Mouser

My cat has suddenly gotten SO WEIRD.

Tonight I noticed that she was hanging around a certain vent in the kitchen, one that I'm aware the mice occasionally use. Zsa Zsa caught one of these mice a few months ago, and since then she's been staring ominously at that vent, but I haven't seen any mouse traces since then.

I was sitting in the living room reading when suddenly -- Bang! Slam! Squeak! -- Zsa Zsa came running past me with a little mouse in her mouth. She sat down and looked at me, and the mouse looked at me too...it was still alive.

She dropped the mouse, it began to run away, and she dived low and scooped it into her mouth again. The mouse was squeaking. I prepared myself to force her to drop it and I wondered if I'd have the guts to put it out of its misery. What would I do?

Then -- before I could move -- she CHOMPED. Crackle! Mouse bones breaking. Staring at me as though daring me to try to stop her, she chomped again...and again...and again. I reached out to take the mangled thing away from her but she moved away and then, suddenly...

Gulp. The mouse was gone. She'd SWALLOWED IT WHOLE.

Granted the mouse was pretty small, but Zsa Zsa is also small, and she subsists on kibble and occasional Pounce treats. This mouse...she just ATE IT UP, barely dead, like some sort of monster cobra, as though to prove that even after the indignity of a trip to the vet and a finger up her butt she was still a wild animal.

The truly amazing thing? She didn't leave a spot of blood on the carpet.

12 comments:

Lois said...

Hmmmmm....maybe this explains why she hasn't pooped lately.
Good for her, I mean the mouse not the poop. This just goes to show that Zsa Zsa hasn't forgotten what her true meaning in life is. Protecting you, the love of her life, from things that go squeak in the night.
Way to go Zsa Zsa.

Adam Thornton said...

She loves me? Why, she wouldn't share a SINGLE piece of mouse with me!

It does make me wonder how many mice she's eaten lately, and whether she's gotten any tapeworms from them. It also makes me wonder what she does with the pieces she can't digest...I hear they regurgitate fur, bones, and tail at some later date.

Definitely, way to go! Just seeing her swallow a mouse whole was a bit of a freaky shock. I figured she'd at least eat it in pieces, if anything.

Anonymous said...

pooping mice is never easy

Adam Thornton said...

I'd think the tail alone would be a trial, let alone the pelt!

Eli McIlveen said...

Yeow.

The other day, Sean yelled at our cats when they were noisily demanding food. Gomiya went on meowing, but Tarquin ran outside, and five minutes later brought Sean a dead bird. We're still trying to decide the significance of this.

Hope Zsa Zsa's feeling better soon.

Adam Thornton said...

Amazing, Eli! And this sounds awfully familiar...

...as I get nearer the bottom of the kibble bag, Zsa Zsa grows less excited about her food; it starts getting a bit stale, I guess.

This was happening during the week before she ate the mouse.

Yesterday I opened a new bag of food and scooped it out for her. Normally she goes WILD but this time she just looked at it...

...and went back to sit in front of the vent.

I think her kibble seems much less tasty than mouse-meat...fewer eyeballs.

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of the B. Kliban poem (and accompanying artwork of the guitar-strumming cat!) --

"Love to eat them mousies...
Mousies what I love to eat.
Bite they little heads off,
Nibble on they tiny feet!"*

Somehow, somewhere, Zsa Zsa got it in her head that she really is a cat, and should be doing cat things like hunting.

But swallowing it whole? I don't know. Are you sure that she's not part python or anaconda?

Have her take good ol' Kliban's advice, and savor her catch.

-------------------------------
*Probably still copyrighted.

Adam Thornton said...

I'm afraid Zsa Zsa may have forgotten her social graces. What's more, since she was born long after Kliban's heydey, she may never have picked up this advice (or have been subjected to a plethora of "Cat" mugs in every store!)

Kliban, I'm sure, was a huge influence on me when I was a child. I used to sit in W.H. Smith's and read his books over and over again, until my parents -- reluctantly -- bought them for me. I still have copies of "Cat," "Whack Your Porcupine," and "Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head" in my bookshelves.

"A. Phid, B. Girl, C. Ship" was always my favourite, somehow.

Eli McIlveen said...

For me it was "Hardw".

Adam Thornton said...

I don't remember "Hardw," that must have been in one of the collections I didn't get...

Eli McIlveen said...

Here it is, a little ways down this page, along with a couple of others.

http://raisethehammer.org/article/581/

Adam Thornton said...

Oh yeah, NOW I remember. It's one with a title that appears to be pointless until you notice its bizarre recurrance.

And a great image to boot!