The Teaches of Meeses

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled sillies. Get hype.

Over the past few months, a lot of small furry creatures took up residence in my home. The Twins, we wanted.

Well, sometimes.

I was in the bathroom for 2 minutes, you little buttholes.

Other small furries, not so much. With the approaching winter, a small mouse started appearing in the living room in the evenings. It skittered across the floor, picking up random crumbs dropped by my conures (bird owners, you know that crumbs are a part of life with flockers around), and usually disappeared in a flash.

Being sort of a softie, I let it be. What was it hurting, stealing a crumb here and there? No big deal.

I can hear the faint laughter of seasoned rural dwellers even as I type this.

As mice are wont to do, one mouse became two mice. And shortly thereafter, two mice became six mice, and I had a problem.

I thought that living in a household with several agile, prey-driven half-breeds would sort of take care of my mouse problem on its own, but I hadn't accounted for Bast's goofiness. Although Bast dearly enjoys chasing the mice, he prefers to take them alive.

And then bring them to me, still alive.

This is adorable, except that occasionally in the evenings, Bast will come to me with his cheeks bulging and barf a very much alive, slobbery mouse into my lap. One memorable day, he did this 3 times.

Since I'm still a wiener, I didn't want to just kill the mice... They were young, and inexperienced, so I put them in a box and did what I do for all small things that cross my path - feed them.

Come on. They're so cute. How can I just kill them?

Unfortunately, my soft heart won over my good sense, and the mice I spared from a grim death escaped, and the Twins started to notice them.

As you can probably guess, having spent most of their lives in a state of starvation gave the Twins some... issues... when it comes to food. They will snack on anything that even smells like food, so I have to watch my food wrappers lest they disappear in the the gullets of the ravenous sneak thieves. With mice already smelling like food, and adding in the excitement of the chase, the Twins don't have any of Bast's reservations about eating their catches, and their hunts are more... rigorous.

The other night, I spotted a mouse panhandling under the parrot cage, and I called Bast to come help me catch it. Only, Bast didn't answer me. Zelda did, and before I knew it, the mouse disappeared into her mouth. I crouched down and called softly to Zelda, saying to her, "Baby, can I have that? Can I have the mouse? Baby, it's grody, can I have that?"

Zelda met my gaze with a level stare for several seconds. Without breaking eye contact, her mouth clamped, and a single, fat drop of blood beaded out of her mouth and fell to the floor with an audible splat.

Nevermind. You can have that one, Princess.