The day started with something which turned out to be adorable.

[xiphias]

This morning, before Lis left for work, I spent some time in the downstairs apartment working out what tasks I wanted to deal with today. And, naturally, the cats followed me down to explore.

Normally, of course, we can attract them back upstairs when they're done looking around, but, this time, Nicky was having none of it. He was sitting in the empty recycling bin, staring at and playing with something in there. So I guess the recycling bin wasn't actually that empty, given that it contained a cat, and something the cat was playing with.

Lis was getting ready to leave, and I'd gone back upstairs, and she called me down. "You have to see this."

What Nicky was playing with was a mouse. An adorable mouse. And he actually was playing. Not particularly hunting, not even being particularly rough. The mouse was completely uninjured, but was unable to get out of the recycling bin, even if there wasn't a cat in there with it. Personally, I can't figure out how the mouse could have gotten INTO the bin, so I suspect that Nicky caught it and brought it into the bin to play with. Lis thinks I'm mistaken, and that it wouldn't have been that difficult for the mouse to get in.

We scooped the mouse up into a plastic cup, and got ready to throw it outside. But Lis thought it was just too adorable. So we put it into an old spaghetti sauce jar, punched some holes in the lid, and threw some granola in there for it to eat.

Then we put the jar down on the floor and let the cats play with the mouse-in-a-jar. The mouse really seemed to basically ignore them, and just eat granola as the jar slid, and occasionally rolled, around the room.

The mouse is probably three weeks old or so; it's a juvenile.

Lis decided to let the mouse go somewhere in the woods/near the river by where she works, which is miles and miles from our place, so the mouse ain't coming back in our place. She gave it some paper napkins, too, for bedding.

. . . she called me from work before she released it, asking if she could keep it as a pet. I told her, "only if you stop at Petco on the way home and get stuff to take care of the mouse with."

It's vermin, y'know? It's a house pest. But it's also cute. So we let it go in the woods. A mouse NOT in our house is no problem.

Yeah, we have pictures and video.

Comments

pets

[(Anonymous)]

Lis did have a couple of pet mice when she was about ten.

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

That is truly cute. To keep a wild mouse it'd have had to go to the vet right away too--wild mice, like any wild animal, tend to pick up all sorts of cooties. :P

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

YOU TWO are really cute. And so is Nicky. I am not so fond of the mouses, though.

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

You think that's bad? I picked up a snake snack a few weeks ago at the pet store. The snake wasn't hungry, so mousie was popped into a small aquarium with food, water, a wheel and bedding until such time as the snake should be peckish again. Then the Unindicted Co-Conspirator saw it. It was cute. And a girl mouse. And it suddenly had a name. Next thing I know, we're back to the pet store to buy a proper cage for little mousie, and a new snake snack for the hungry snake.

Yeah, we're embarrassingly sentimental...

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

Too cute! I love the idea of cats playing with mouse-in-a-jar. I once kept some pet mice in an reptile aquarium cage. I would regularly come home from work only to find the two mice sitting on top of the mouse cage, staring at the mice. The mice meanwhile, would climb to the top of their cardboard climbing structure, stand up on their hind legs and sniff curiously at the cats.