Last Week I Behaved Liked a 12 Year Old Girl & All the Cats Were Fired

It started out innocently enough. Pepper (the Roommate) decided she was going to clean out her closet. She was packing for an unfortunate trip back east to bury her grandmother (Rest in Peace, Gram). And decided to deal with the emotions of grief and despair by being productive. Good on her.

Pepper is perpetually disorganized. As opposed to me who exists in a state of semi-chaos but my personal belongings are hyper organized. Everything has a place, just not necessarily where you might expect. Pepper on the other hand tends to shove everything in a corner and deal with it later. As a result of this policy her closet had become a catch all. The floor was covered in stacks upon stacks of paperbacks and DVDs. She was always complaining about not having enough room, and I , the gay roommate, could not figure out how she was running out of closet space. Not only is her closet bigger than mine, she has a fraction of the wardrobe.

Well the fact it was stuffed with dog stuff, books, movies and a dozen other odds and ends explained it. While she had very little clothing (for a girl), she had a ton of other stuff in the closet.

Our house is small. Painfully so sometimes. And since the living room was converted to the Kennel a few years ago, personal belongings are almost entirely in our individual bedrooms and bathrooms. I had long ago decided being over crowded by my beloved books and movies as unacceptable. So I weeded through my books and donated several boxes worth of books I knew I was never going to read again, and that weren't valuable enough to warrant keeping (I have a collection of first editions and antique books that are valuable.) I boxed up a bunch of other books and put them into storage off site. Deciding only to keep the books I had on my “to read” list, and those I knew I might access sin the future (reference books on the paranormal for example.) (I am an encyclopedia of weird, but even I have limits.)

My DVDs were another problem. Because I happen to watch a lot of movies. And periodically go back and re-watch movies and tv shows that I am fond of, or feel in the mood for. Netflix has sort of dominated my life recently, but I wasn't ready to part with my DVDs. The problem was I had well over 300 DVDs. Not including the box sets and television shows on DVD. So, the solution was obviously. I reserved a single shelf on a book case in my room, and put all my television shows there. I took the rest of my DVDs and pulled them out of their boxes. This allowed me to put the actual disks into sleeves, which were there alphabetized in a storage container. This took my DVD collection from being a large bookcase and then some, down to a small three foot tall by one foot wide container. Awesome.

Pepper had not yet realized this solution. So in the midst of pulling things from her closet, I hear a sudden terrified shriek. I don't mean a scream, I mean a full on girly as hell shriek. Pepper is not a terribly girly woman, she is pretty much a confirmed tom boy, and refuses to give it up. To hear her shriek like a little girl was both startling, and some what disconcerting.

I immediately came to her door. “What the hell?”

“A MOUSE!” She squealed at me, dancing on her feet as she couldn't shake her heebeejeebees. “There's a mouse in my closet! AHH!”

I laugh at her reaction. “It's just a mouse. Widget (one of the aforementioned currently fired cats) caught one the other day. She was very proud of herself.”

“IT'S IN MY CLOSET!” She wails at me. “GET IT OUT!”

I'm not sure when it happened but some where along the line of cohabitation with Pepper I became the “Guy Who Gets Things Done.” Mostly this seems to involve taking out the trash, repairing broken cabinets and occasionally a fence. This is not entirely with out justification, I was raised on a farm and I am quite familiar with reconstruction work and with the right tools can pretty much build almost anything. I do not, however, know how this translates into being responsible for removing unwanted rodents from closets.

Widget, who is now fired.

I entered Pepper's room stating “This sounds like an excellent job for the cats. Go get Widget.”

I felt a cat was an appropriate solution. Field mice are rather quick, and tiny. Widget had already proved earlier in the week she was a productive mouser. And it would be the Circle-of-Life-Lion-King-Mufasa-Scar-Betrays-Everyone-Nature-Taking-Its-Course sort of thing (and yes, I did just spoil the Lion King for you, Sorry.) (Not really.)

Pepper rushes out of the room leaving me to stare at the still cluttered closet with no idea if there really was a mouse, or if Pepper was hallucinating. I never put it past any one to imagine things like mice, and spiders. I do not imagine spiders. If I say there was a spider, there was a damn spider. No matter what the evidence says.

I began to slowly pull things out of the closet, trying to free up some floor space so that Widget has some room to work. I lift up a piece of rumpled clothing that had been laying at the bottom of the space for god knows how long, and low and behold there was a mouse.

Except my reaction wasn't “oh wow there really IS a mouse.”

 Look at those squinty Roid-Rage eyes!

My reaction went more like this: “AHHH A MOUSE JESUS CHRIST!”

And I may, or may not, have shot backwards several feet.

Now, as stated before, I grew up on a farm. Mice were not uncommon. We had them in the barns most of the time, and had two rather predatory barn cats who were very good mousers. In fact the most evidence we ever saw of the mice were their dead bodies stuffed between bales of hay (presumably to be saved for a later snack), and the occasional droppings. Once in a while there would be evidence of a mouse in the house, at which point we would bring the cats inside over night. They would spend the night indoors, and in the morning were put back outside. And there was no more evidence of a mouse. I was never really certain how they did it, but they always did. We usually only had one maybe two mice a year, and generally only in the colder months when they would decide even the barns weren't warm enough, or that the threat of Cat was too severe to continue living in the neighborhood.

You never really saw live mice. The few times I remember stumbling upon live mice, they were being hunted/actively chased by the cats so they weren't long for this world anyway.

I also had pet rats and pet mice growing up. In fact I had a particularly cool pet mouse named Walter through my first two years of college. (He was trained to do tricks for macaroni and cheese.) I am not afraid of rodents, per say. But there is something disturbing about seeing a small dark colored field mouse darting around your house. In the back of my mind my thought is always “You stay away from my cereal you bastard!”

Hey, I love lucky charms. I am assuming this is a universal species wide invariant. Have you tried them? They are delicious.

Rodrigo the gay field mouse with a drug problem
will eat your Lucky Charms, people.

Back to the mouse in the closet.

Pepper returns with Widget, who looks less than pleased. A life time of human's picking her up and snuggling her against her will has made her some what leery of what we plan to do with her. Pepper looks at me, triumphant with cat and knowing that I had actually seen the mouse (and not reacted that much more calmly then she had.)

“See? It's in there!” She thrusts the cat at me.

Like some how I am supposed to be better at putting the cat on the ground near the mouse in the closet than she is. This is another one of those things that happens when you're the “Man of the House” (however tenuous that is, because were this a spider I would be calling in the National Guard at this point.)

I pet Widget and tell her there's a mouse in the closet, not that she has any idea what it means. I set her on the closet floor where the mouse had been spotted last (and since vanished in a tiny furry blur.) I expect her to react the same way as my childhood barn cats would have, catching the scent of the mouse Callie and Cujo (yes I had a cat named Cujo) would have been all about catching it. Widget, not so much. In fact she basically looks up at both of us and gives us the finger. She leaps out of the closet and runs off.

Pepper and I look at one another. “Well....” I say. “We still have Jack? And at least two dogs that we know will eat mice...”

Cpt. Jack Harkness.
Cat / James Bond of the Future
(may, or may not, be the Face of Boe)

Cpt. Jack Harkness, another cat, had lived for several months feral in the area before eventually deciding he lived here. We were both fairly certain he spent his walk about days hunting for field mice behind the house here at Zombie Slayer Central (the name for our kennel/location.) We both, foolishly it turns out, assumed Jack would fill in the void that Widget had left in our Cats-are-useful-because-they-kill-mice plan.

Pepper left the room again, this time calling for Jack. I returned to gingerly pulling things from the closet. Pepper entered the room with Jack following her, presumably because he thought she had something delicious for him to eat.

“You call him.” She says when Jack stops at the doorway with a suspicious look on his expressive face.

“Jack Jack! Come 'ere.” I say in my sweetest here-kitty-kitty-voice.

Here's the problem with Jack: Jack is a bit of a fucker.

By that I mean, Jack has a tendency to know exactly what you want, and do the opposite. Just because. He's a cat, and he's Cpt. Jack Harkness and he can. Don't get me wrong, I find his antics amusing most of the time. (Including the time he went on some kind of catnip bender and tore apart the laundry area of the house and then slept on his handiwork.) But this was not one of the times I wanted to be amused by Jack, instead I needed Jack to do a job.

Jack said “Piss off.” Turned around and promptly left the room. For a moment Pepper and I stared at one another in shock, though I'm not sure why. It's not as if Jack's attitude was anything new to either of us.

“You go get him, he's your cat.” She tells me.

Her logic is sound. So I leave the room and go find Jack. He is lazily strolling around the kennel area, with no particular destination clear. I scoop him up and he immediately demands I put him down. Jack is an affectionate cat, on his terms only. And he makes this very clear.

I try to sooth him. “Look, this is going to be awesome. You get to eat a mouse. Well I probably won't let you eat it, because that's gross. But I will let you kill it, and let's be honest, that's the fun part.” I firmly believe all cats are serial killers in the making. The only reason they don't go about creating mass panic and slaughtering people by the dozens is size (which is why people who own tigers freak me out.)

I get Jack back to Pepper's room and bring him inside. By this point he is being quite vocal about his disapproval of the man handling. He is indigent and adamant that he put down immediately. I oblige his demands, by putting him in the closet.

Once again operating under the theory that Cats-are-useful-because-they-kill-mice, and with the memories of how quick and eager my childhood barn cats were to hunt mice, I assume Jack will simply catch the scent of the mouse and be too distracted by his instincts to murder and maim to worry about escaping the closet.

I mentioned earlier that the problem with Jack is that he's a bit of a fucker, right? Yeah, I forgot to factor Jack's natural tendency to be a bit of an asshole into the equation. So while he did for a moment catch the scent of the mouse and show temporary interest in pursuing it, the second he realized this was what we wanted. He took off.

He left the room, leaping over the baby gate at the door with what I'm pretty sure was the cat version of “So long, suckers!”

And No Fucks were given that day.

“That's it!” Pepper announces. “Cats are fired!”

“That cat is a bastard.” I declare, mostly because I felt like stating the obvious was necessary at this point.

“He's your cat.” Pepper reminds me, which is her go-to response whenever Jack does something we find annoying. She likes to remind me his existence in this house is due to my bleeding heart.

“Yeah yeah. We still have two dogs. Let's get some more stuff cleared out of the closet and then bring in Sissy.”

She's pretty, and she knows it.

Sissy is my English Shepherd. A retired agility and trick dog she spent the first year(ish) of her life being virtually feral. We figure she survived largely by hunting for her own food. This we have seen backed up by several instances of hunting small animals (and birds) while hiking. Along with Myles, Pepper's golden, as her cohort. The two of them have eaten and/or killed several ground squirrels, gophers, field mice and one very unfortunate desert snake. We know they will hunt and kill this mouse. We are confident the dogs will not fail us where the cats clearly have.

At this point we had underestimated our own excitement level. And as we returned to pulling more things out of the closet, the mouse appeared again. He dashed across an opening on the floor and vanished into a pile of shoes.

Pepper and I in unison shouted “MOUSE!” And then we both screamed. I can tell you that one of us screamed like a girl. And one of us screamed like a little 12 year old girl. I refuse to divulge which is which. To protect the innocent and/or guilty.

And so began a dance with the mouse. Every time we would find him, he would dart out of his hiding space and find another. This would illicit shrieks of terror and we would leap back away from closet. In short we were probably as freaked by the mouse as he was by us. At one point Pepper pointed out the irony of two grown adults being afraid of a tiny field mouse. I in return pointed out the tiny field mouse was fast and clearly was on performance enhancing drugs, and there for capable of anything. And that I had never personally seen a mouse roid-rage attack, but I'm sure it would be bloody and violent and we would be helpless to stop it.

When we had enough space in the closet clear to bring in a dog. Pepper grabbed Sissy. I remained on guard duty with the mouse, humming to myself and trying to recount any movies in which the dude left holding the flash light and keeping watch didn't die a horrible death. Nothing came to mind.

Sissy came into the room with Pepper, looking very confused about what we were doing. We pointed towards the closet and kept telling her to get “Get the mouse, Sissy! Get the mouse!”

She obediently put her head down and sniffed. But immediately looked up at us like we were crazy people.

I decided if she saw the mouse she would hunt it. Remembering a hair raising incident a few years ago in which a friend's parakeet I was watching escaped her cage, and Sissy attempted to eat it mid-air. (She missed, the bird survived.)

So once again we began pulling things out of the closet. One at a time. Gingerly. I picked everything up like it was TNT and going to go off at any second. Pepper held onto Sissy's collar and stood behind me at this point. Some how thinking I would be her human shield.

It didn't take long before we found the mouse again. And while I told myself I was looking for it, and to hold my shit together like a man, the second it went zipping across an open space I shrieked and flung myself backwards. I was not alone in this as Pepper did the same, pointing wildly with a finger and howling at poor confused Sissy to “GET IT GET IT GET IT!”

Sissy was so thrown by our shrieks and shivers she just stood there, staring. Not that I entirely blame her, I'm sure it was a pretty ridiculous sight.

A few more attempts with Sissy yielded the same result; a very confused dog and a mouse still lose in the closet. Taking pity on the confused dog we fired her from the job and put her in my room. Pepper then went to get Myles. Myles is less sensitive compared to Sissy, so we thought he would tolerate our shrieks with more fortitude. Myles is also single-handedly responsible for eating three gophers, four mice, and one dead rodent that may or may not have been a mole at some point in it's life. We thought for sure Myles would catch the mouse and eat it. As an added bonus, Myles was familiar with hunting terms and knew how to find things were asking for (though we had never specifically asked him to hunt down a mouse, or anything living for that matter.)

This photo tells you everything you need
to know about Myles. Everything.

She came in the room with Myles, who was very happy to see me. Myles sort of views me as his absentee step father. He constantly seeks my acknowledgment and approval, like in doing so, some how he will be a man. Because I know this, and because I too am a bit of a fucker, I often tease Myles by refusing to acknowledge his desperate attempts to impress me (usually be bringing me a toy of some sort and offering to show it to me a thousand times.) (I do most of the time give in eventually and acknowledge him, but his desperation is funny.)

I fend Myles off with a dismissive “Yes. I'm happy to see you too. But we have serious business to do here, man.”

Once again we ready ourselves to face the closet. I pick up a small backpack, that I am sure the mouse is hiding under. So certain am I that I tell myself, again, to hold my shit together. To be ready to tell Myles to get it.

Sure enough. The mouse was under the backpack. And with out fail Pepper and I both lose our decorum, shriek like over caffeinated little girls and fling ourselves backwards, safely out of the mouse's path. Myles, who is not the sharpest tool in the shed, panics. Worried about what was worrying us he completely forgets about his command to hunt and comes rushing at us. Trying to offer doggy comfort and aid. This is not what we want. So we try again to get him to just sniff around in the closet. This was the dog we had watched track a gopher underground for twenty yards so he could eat it when it popped out of it's little hidey-hole in the ground (fleeing from Sissy who was digging a trench through the earth to get to him.)

Myles just remains convinced that the world is ending because both of his role models are freaking out. And if the humans are worried, clearly the sky is falling and we're all doomed. I try to compose myself as I look at the closet problem.

“Maybe if we clear it out? Leave the mouse with no where to go to?” I suggest.

“Yeah, we could do that. He couldn't escape Myles then, right?” Pepper says hopefully.

“Right.” I agree, more to convince myself of the plan than because I believed it was actually going to work.

This house from Hoarders looks about right.

While this adventure had begun with Pepper cleaning out her closet. It had now been reduced to a man, well mouse, hunt. And her bedroom had the contents of her entire closet spread across it. Her bed was buried under a pile of books and movies and clothing. Her floor had a small network of patches you could weave through but no space particularly to stand that wasn't directly in front of the closet. The room was so messed up, we couldn't even close the closet doors, too much stuff in the way.

We began to slowly remove everything from the closet. And by we, I mean me. Pepper remained standing back, taking things from me as I handed them to her. But I, as the man of the house (and I use this term loosely, given my actions previously that night my manhood was rightly being called into question) was relegated to the task of directly facing the mouse.

When enough space had been cleared for Myles, he voluntarily got into the closet, staring at us with an expression that clearly said “This is what you want...right?” It was. Sort of. We kept asking him to hunt, and he kept getting confused. He got out of the closet and brought us a toy. Then he brought us a slipper.

It was around this time that the mouse appeared again. Darting from between stacks of books and DVDs. Cue irrational shrieks of terror. Myles was not cool with this, and his brain dissolved. It was okay though, because really he was in good company by this point.

In an active of Mercy, Pepper put Myles back outside to be tormented by my shepherd puppy, Banshee. Trust us, it was far kinder a fate.

“What if we took out everything and then tossed Widget and Jack in there?” I suggested trying to figure out how we were going outsmart the mouse. Really the one suggestion we should have made which was to put down mouse traps, never crossed either of our minds. Were determined that some animal some where would be of use to us, damnit.

Slowly, with a methodical precision, I removed the stacks of books and movies (and promptly deposited them all over Pepper's bed – who needs sleep right?) When the closet was finally clear we had the sudden realization that there was no mouse. He was gone. Vanished. Speedy Gonzalas'd his ass out of there.

Pepper and I looked at one another, and then at the mess around us.

“There is a mouse...in my room...” Pepper whimpered.

“Maybe we should have left him in the closet?” I suggested. “Perhaps he was in the closet for a reason. Maybe he wasn't ready to come out of the closet, and we forced him. Now Rodrigo's going to start doing drugs, and poppers and circuit parties and we've set him up for a life time of addiction and sexual promis--”

“SHUT UP.”

I shut up. I just keep looking around, and finally my eyes land on her open suitcase. “Maybe he's going on vacation?” I offer. “It's like a children's book. The country mouse who travels across the country...”

“He had better not be in my suitcase! How the hell am I going to explain that to air port security?!”

“I dunno. Just say 'AH HA! There is the bastard!' That usually works.”

“For who?”

“I dunno! People! What do you want from me?! I'm a farm kid who just spent the last hour shrieking like my balls were in a vice over a fucking mouse! Clearly my brain is fried!” Not to mention I had named him, Rodrigo.

“I need to go to work tomorrow. I am going to bed.” On cue we both look at her bed which is piled several feet high with stuff.

“Yeah about that...” I say.

We spent the rest of the night trying to recoup our dignity, while moving the stacks of books and movies to the would-be-a-dinning-room-if-we-had-a-table (let's face it, I'm 30 years old and still live like a college kid. Peter Pan Complex Ahoy!) She ended up going to bed around 1am. We never did find the mouse again. And TSA never pulled her aside to ask why there was a mouse in her luggage.

Where the books & DVDs moved.

The moral of the story is that our cats are worthless. And our dogs are pretty close to worthless if the humans can't be trusted to keep it together. It was not my finest, or manliest moment. But it makes for a really funny story.