Good News (although some people may not think so).
Yesterday morning, around 6am, Pootle our massive grey tom cat arrived home with a half dead mouse in his mouth. Nothing strange about that as our moggies seem to have found a nest of the little critters and routinely leave us a freshly killed breakfast. While this is very nice of them, as both my considerably better half and I are both veggies, we end up giving the poor mouse a respectful burial in the garden rather than eating them…. We now know where Stephen King got his idea for one of his books from looking at the number of dead in our flower beds!
Yesterday morning however was slightly different. When collecting the mouse from the carpet where Pootle had left it, we noticed it was still breathing although did not seem to be able to move anymore. Wanting it to have a dignified death, we put it in a quiet spot in the kitchen to let it slip away. However, come lunchtime, it was still breathing and had moved a little. Hummm… two hours later, while still not moving much, it was much more alert so a decision was made to place the mouse in the greenhouse with some food and water just in case it continued to recover: the cats can’t get into the greenhouse but there are sufficient gaps for the mouse to leave if it was able to. If it couldn’t, then we decided that we would continue to care for it…. Well yes, we are soft and yes, some people think that mouse are vermin. We don’t think that way: everything has the right to life so any help we can give, we will give….. that’s the way we have ended up feeding 8 cats, three hedgehogs, four squirrels and countless slugs (or as my considerably better half call them…. “my people.”)
Anyway when we went back to check on the mouse later in the evening, it had gone. We were both extremely pleased to have saved a life to live another day.
Bad News.
Pootle and his sisters think differently from us and this morning left us not one, not two, not three but four dead mice.
Bloody cats!
