Of Mice and Cats

If you have never lived in a drought area, you might be surprised that one of the side effects is the attractiveness of your home to mice and other rodents. Yes, we live in a drought area.

We first became suspicious when our cats would sit very still in front of the refrigerator for 15 minutes at a time as if waiting for something to come out from underneath. But of course they could have also just been hoping we'd pull something out of the refrigerator to feed them.

St. Pauli Girl first noticed the mouse droppings in our pet food cabinet right before Christmas. We immediately went into the first stage of denial and assumed they had been there since before we moved in or the mice had gotten their fill of pet food and moved on.

A few days later, we were having happy hour at the kitchen table when I noticed a blur out of the corner of my eye. I looked around and chalked it up to an illusion. But then I saw the mouse scurrying across the kitchen floor and underneath the cabinets.

"I see the mouse," I whispered as I remained as still as possible. "It's under the cabinets and looking right at me."

St. Pauli Girl wanted to get closer to see, but I urged her to remain still as well. The mouse moved a few steps closer and looked at me again. I'm not sure why I waited for it to get closer. I doubted that I could dive on the floor and catch it.

The pet food cabinet had originally been the location of the kitchen sink when the house was built 50 years ago. So it had ventilation holes in the bottom of the cabinet that hung out over the floor. The mouse looked at me one last time then ran to the cabinet and climbed up inside through the ventilation hole.

"Ha! He's trapped," I shouted as I jumped up. "We've got him now!" I ran to the other room and grabbed one of our cats. "Dinner time," I told her.

I carried her to the kitchen and set her in front of the cabinet. I pulled the cabinet door open. "Go on, get the mouse!"

The cat just looked up at me as if to say, "why did you wake me from my deep sleep?"

She stood still, and if she smelled the mouse, she really didn't care. But then my plan backfired as our dogs, old Bo and puppy Bonny, saw the cat on the floor and immediately charged. They all took off running, screeching and barking to other parts of the house. We were on our own.

We pulled the various pet food containers out only to find an empty cabinet. There were more ventilation holes in back through which the mouse had probably gone back into the wall.

Now that we had an actual mouse sighting, we went from the denial stage to the hunting stage. We bought several mouse traps and placed them in strategic spots throughout the house. But three days later, the traps remained empty.

A few nights later, we sat at the kitchen table again when I once again saw the mouse creeping along the floor beneath the cabinets. This mouse was huge; he made Gus from the Cinderella movie look like Dolph Lundgren. Apparently he enjoyed our generous servings of pet food. He tried to climb up into the pet food cabinet and got stuck. But this time, the dogs were on it; I didn't even bother to wake up the cats.

Bonny immediately latched onto the mouse's tail and tried to pull it out, but the mouse put up a fierce resistance. After several minutes, the mouse finally came out of the hole in a desperate attempt to escape. But the resilient Bonny kept at it, grabbed the mouse in her mouth and appropriately carried it to the dining room.

We didn't want Bonny to dismember the mouse in the dining room so we encouraged her to take it outside. Big mistake. She lost her grip, and the mouse scurried away.

A few nights later, we were relaxing in front of the fire in our living room with Bo and Bonny sleeping at our feet. Our cats were sleeping somewhere far away, probably in the lushest chairs they could find.

Suddenly St. Pauli Girl yelled, "The mouse!" as it scurried out from behind a curtain.

Bo and Bonny jumped into action chasing the mouse back behind the curtain. But this time they would not be denied. The mouse darted about, but they kept after it. Finally, Bo, who is about 98 in human years, managed to grab the mouse in his mouth. Sensible Bo headed straight for the door where we let him outside to finish up the grisly business.

Later we hailed Bo the conquering hero while making sure we didn't make enough noise to wake up the cats. So apparently you don't have to teach an old dog new tricks which is great because you can't teach cats anything.

Rule 34A: Ladders Can Turn on You

I try to live my life by a few simple rules. For example:

1. The workday ends at 6:00 p.m. unless there's a life and death reason to continue. (Note: this mainly applies to weekends and finishing up household chores and duties)

2. Happy hour starts at 6:00 p.m. (this rule also helps St. Pauli Girl tolerate rule number one)

These are just a couple of examples, but I never know when I'll be adding a new rule.

Our new house has motion detector floodlights in the backyard. We never noticed this until one morning after a vicious thunderstorm, St. Pauli Girl saw the lights flashing like a strobe light on a disco ball.

"The poor dogs probably didn't get any sleep," she said.

"Yeah, well they were probably dancing."

She didn't find that humorous and later that day, I climbed up a ladder to disable the motion detector. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a power switch; instead I set the sensor to its lowest setting and aimed the detector at the wall. Unless we had an earthquake, the lights shouldn't come on again.

A week later, we went to put the dogs outside at about 11:00 p.m. For some reason, the lights were flashing, and no one was dancing. I pulled the ladder from the garage and set it against the house. This was an extension ladder where you could slide part of the ladder higher and some sort of locking mechanism would hold it in place.

I started climbing the ladder then paused to shield my eyes from the blinking floodlights above me. Suddenly, the ladder slid down by one rung. The locking mechanism must have failed. Luckily, I kept my balance and remained standing on the ladder. Then everything seemed to go in slow motion.

The ladder slipped down another rung. I held onto the ladder but this time my left foot got caught between two rungs. A sharp stab of pain shot through my foot. At this point I realized the ladder would continue to collapse rung by rung, so I would have to free myself. Luckily, I noticed I stood only three rungs above the ground. Before the ladder gave way again, I stretched and got my right foot on the ground. This improved my situation, but my left foot remained stuck in the ladder.

I yanked my left leg hoping to pull my foot from the ladder. Instead the entire ladder pulled back from the house toward me. But the top heavy ladder shifted and started falling to the ground left of me, pulling my foot with it. I danced and hopped on one leg toward it as it fell. When it hit the ground, it spun me around, and I fell onto my left arm on the concrete sidewalk. As I lay on the ground cursing and wondering what part of me hurt more, Bonny the dog came over and licked my face in a friendly gesture. Either that or she hoped to eat my dead carcass.

The good news was that my foot was no longer stuck in the ladder. The better news was that my foot no longer hurt or maybe it just didn't hurt in comparison to the pain in my arm. I suffered enough injuries in my youth to realize nothing was broken. I self-diagnosed myself with a bruised elbow and sprained wrist.

After a sleepless night, I spent the next day wondering how cavemen survived. "I could hardly type much less kill a sabre-tooth tiger or even gather nuts and berries," I thought. "Stuff like this must have happened to them all the time."

After six weeks, I'm mostly recovered although I probably couldn't operate a tomahawk right now if I had to. Luckily I'm right-handed. But this incident forced me to add a new rule/caveat to my life:

Nothing good happens that involves a ladder after 11:00 p.m.

Where's Lassie When You Need Her?

As I had mentioned in a previous post, we recently moved again. During the first few weeks in the new house, a multitude of workers came and went fixing this and that or turning on utilities. One day, when I wasn't expecting anyone, I answered the door where an older woman waited.

"Hello," she said, "I'm your new neighbor. Sorry to meet like this, but do you have a grey dog? I just saw a grey dog I hadn't seen before running down the street."

"Oh that's impossible," I said. "He's locked in the fence in the backyard. I'll double check. Thanks for asking."

I walked through the backyard only to find no sign of Bo. I then ran to the front yard and wandered down the street. About three houses down, I saw a grey blur darting through a backyard. Luckily he stopped when I called his name, and I carried him home.

I inspected the backyard and noticed that the fence gates won't close completely unless you turn the handle while closing the gate. Some visiting worker must have left the gate open. From then on, I inspected the gates after workers left.

A couple of weeks later, we acquired a new puppy named Bonny. Her energy overwhelmed all of us including Bo. Bonny definitely believed she had the job of pack leader and couldn't tolerate Bo getting any attention.

One day as dusk fell, I realized I hadn't seen Bo in a while. I walked through the backyard and found no trace of him. I checked the gates, but they were all secure.

"Looks like Bo got out again," I told St. Pauli Girl. "We must have a hole in the fence somewhere."

We wandered through the neighborhood then drove around in the car but could not find him and at that point it would have been difficult to see our grey dog in the dark. I walked with Bonny through the backyard one last time hoping she might provide a clue. But she never left my side, and Bo never responded to my calls. We finally gave up and hoped someone had taken him in for the night.

The next morning I wandered around the yard hoping Bo had come back to the gate. Once again, there was no sign of him. I went out through the garage, ventured down the driveway but came up empty. As I walked up the driveway, I glanced at the well-house in the backyard and noticed a board sticking up out of the roof.

"Oh no!" I thought as I ran to the backyard.

Our well-house is a brick shed built into the side of a hill. The entrance is on top and drops down about eight feet. Unfortunately, the hinges on the door had rusted away, and the opening now was simply a board on top of the hole, and the well inspectors had failed to secure it with the bricks that had been on top.

I ran to the top of the well-house and pulled out the board that had been sticking out of the opening. I peered down and sure enough, Bo stood there looking up at me. Then he ran around a bit so I knew he wasn't hurt.

"Really Bo?" I said. "You couldn't have barked?"

He wagged his tail.

I went back to the house to get St. Pauli Girl and a flashlight. I would need help to pull Bo out, and I wanted to make sure I could see what I was climbing down into as the well-house seemed like a great home for snakes and scorpions.

I climbed down the ladder into the well-house, grabbed Bo and hoisted him up and out to St. Pauli Girl who gave the hungry dog a treat. Then I made sure I secured the top as best I could although I doubted Bo would ever run across it again. Bo survived the ordeal just fine.

Later that day, I played fetch with Bonny. She would fetch the ball then show it to Bo as if to demonstrate her superiority before she returned the ball to me.

"You sure weren't much help last night," I told her. "You're no Lassie."

She looked up at me and wagged her tail. She had a gleam in her eye; she definitely liked being top dog. Then I started to wonder, "Hmmm, maybe Bo was pushed?"

Bo Knows Ice Cream

We adopted our dog, Bo, from the pound almost two years ago. We used our special method of picking the dog that wasn't yapping its head off when you walked into the pound.  They told us his name was Bo which was fine with us. (On a side note, this is the first time I've actually written out his name. I always assumed it would be as Beau because he has a grey coat, tall regal ears and bushy eyebrows. He looked like he could be a confederate general. Unfortunately, his doofus personality reminds me more of Bo Duke from the "Dukes of Hazzard", and so "Bo" it is.) Bo has been a good dog and not caused any trouble up until this past August.

One day St. Pauli Girl got distracted while opening the front door. Stealthy Bo snuck out when she wasn't looking. Unfortunately, she didn't notice he was gone until about two hours later. She quickly posted an online ad knowing he probably couldn't get far without someone from the neighborhood taking him in. About an hour later, someone called with good news.

"Yeah, I'm calling about a lost schnauzer," said the female caller.

"Oh good, you found him?" St. Pauli Girl asked.

"Well, I found a schnauzer. This one doesn't have any tags so I don't know who he is or who he belongs to."

St. Pauli Girl slapped her forehead. "Yeah, we had just given him a bath and forgot to put his collar back on."

"Doesn't smell like he's had a bath recently..."

"Well he has one of those chips in his neck so he can be tracked."

"Yeah? How's that working out for you?"

"Look, where are you?" St. Pauli Girl asked in a rising voice.

"At the Dairy Queen on University."

"That's our neighborhood. That must be Bo."

"Bo! Bo!," the woman shouted in the background. "Well he doesn't come when he's called. Can you identify him? This one is grey."

"Aren't all schnauzers grey?"

"No, I had one that was brown once."

"Well is this dog brown?"

"No, like I said, he's grey."

"Then that must be Bo. I'll be right there."

St. Pauli Girl jumped into the car and headed to Dairy Queen. As she drove, she felt relieved Bo successfully managed to cross six lanes of traffic without getting hit by a car. Then she realized that was even stranger because Bo was basically afraid of his own shadow. She parked the car and saw an older woman with a couple of kids and Bo sitting at an outdoor table.

"Thank you so much," St. Pauli Girl said.

"He didn't come running to you. Are you sure he's yours?"

"He started wagging his tail when he saw me." St. Pauli Girl walked up to Bo and began petting him. Then she noticed a white substance on his whiskers. "What's that on his face?"

"Ice cream."

"You fed him ice cream?"

"He got into my granddaughter's. Or maybe she gave him some. I don't know, but you owe me three dollars for the ice cream."

"What? Who told you to buy him ice cream?"

"Well my granddaughter couldn't rightly eat it after he stuck his snout in it."

St. Pauli Girl sighed. "I don't have three dollars on me."

The woman just waved and shook her head. "Never mind. You just get right on down to Petsmart right now and get him a tag."

"Uh, thanks."

St. Pauli Girl loaded Bo up in the car and drove off.

"Well Bo, I hoped you've learned your lesson. You're not planning on more adventures are you?"

Bo just licked his lips and stared out the window at the Dairy Queen as they drove away.

Ultimate Guard Dog

Booboo the dog passed away on July 16 at the age of fifteen. Instead of getting bogged down in another pet eulogy, I choose to celebrate the day he channeled his inner Lassie and saved our house from destruction.

Being very territorial, Booboo claimed every backyard he lived in as his own kingdom. He kept us safe from squirrels, birds and even deer. His fearlessness finally caught up to him the night he chased and trapped a porcupine.

In 1999, we moved into a country house on 1.5 acres overlooking a heavily wooded area. The lot had no fence, which left us worried about how to keep Booboo from running away. At first, we kept him tied to a chain but within ten minutes, by running around the tree, he would end up tied against it helplessly. We finally just set him free to roam about. Amazingly, he stayed within the confines of the property as if we had given him a survey of the land. Apparently he picked out his territory and decided that it was enough for a dog his size.

 

Booboo guarding backyard at our previous house.

 

He kept us entertained nightly as deer came up through the woods, and he ran down to bark at them. Annoyed, they would simply lower their heads as if to charge, and Booboo would back off. 

The actual backyard of the house was an empty field filled with weeds and tall grass which we hadn't gotten around to doing anything with. One day while St. Pauli Girl worked inside the house, Booboo kept running to the front deck and barking like crazy. Booboo liked to bark at passing cars, joggers, walkers, unicyclists, etc., so St. Pauli Girl didn't pay much attention. After a while, Booboo parked himself by the back door, still barking. Finally St. Pauli Girl had had enough and went outside to get him to quiet down.

When she walked out, a neighbor from across yelled a bit too casually, “Hey, did you know your backyard is on fire?”

After pausing a second to wonder why this delightful neighbor hadn't called the fire department, St. Pauli Girl ran to the backyard and verified an out-of-control inferno. She quickly called 911 and then grabbed a garden hose.

The volunteer fire department responded within about ten minutes with a tanker truck. The firemen jumped out and fiddled with the hose. Then, a bit despondently, they approached St. Pauli Girl to tell her the bad news: there was no water in the truck. (Seems like “Fill the truck with water” would be numero uno on the fire department's daily to-do list, but what do I know? I'm not a fireman. Plus they were volunteers; you get what you pay for.)

The firemen stood behind St. Pauli Girl and shouted helpful instructions at her on where to aim the garden hose. Eventually the fire was put out, leaving behind only a blackened yard and smoldering utility pole.

But if it hadn't been for Booboo, we might have lost the house and maybe even the neighborhood.

Booboo guarded our backyards until the very end. Even when he couldn't much run anymore, he still walked toward the birds to shoo them away from our patio. So “cheers” to Booboo on a life well-lived.

Baby Kitty, R.I.P.

Baby Kitty passed away yesterday. It was neither unexpected nor tragic by any means; she had lived a long, full life.

Baby Kitty may seem like an odd name for a fifteen-year-old cat, but we inherited her by odd circumstances. She came from our previous cat Socks's final litter that Socks squeezed out just before we could get her fixed. Baby Kitty was wild, the only wild one of the six in the litter, and so was very shy around people. We gave away all of the kittens except for her only because we simply could not catch her. By the time we could catch her, we'd already had her for several months. She had long since passed the adorable kitten stage and so, well, I guess we were stuck with each other. But because we were ever hopeful in her early days that we would eventually find a home for her, we never officially picked out a name. She was simply The Baby Kitty by default, and the "The" fell off after a while.

I was the first to eventually earn her trust. By sitting in the garage for several hours a day over a few weeks' time, I waited for her to approach me. After a while I could pet her, and finally I could carry her with only mild complaints and a few scratches. But she never did totally lose her wildness; Baby Kitty would only let us pet her on her terms: we had to be sitting down, and once we started petting her, if we stopped, she would bite us.

Baby Kitty lived a good cat life, chasing tennis balls, birds, and squirrels, and she even bonded with our dog BooBoo when we trained him about a decade ago to do Cat Round-up at bedtime. Of all our cats, she was the most elusive, but BooBoo has a good nose and always managed to find her hiding spot.

Once, Baby Kitty pulled off a stunning feat when she jumped from a sitting position to about the five-foot mark as an escaped parakeet swooped across the room. As much as we mourned the unexpected and unfortunate passing of Sheila, we had to marvel at the super-cat-hero leap executed by the quiet and shy Baby Kitty.

She put up with us through five moves but finally let us know that enough was enough by refusing to come into our current house for the first four months. She spent the entire winter in the backyard. Within the past month, we noticed she had gotten quite thin, and in the past week had become mostly bones. Then she stopped eating completely, and her breathing worsened. As her health went downhill, we debated what to do.

I remember ten years ago when we lived in a lakeside neighborhood surrounded by trees and wildlife, the community took rabies very seriously, and once a year a local veterinarian would offer rabies shots at the community center. We took our pets down there along with Baby Kitty in a pet carrier. When I brought her up to the veterinarian, she refused to come out. We shook the carrier upside down but she managed to hang on. Both the vet and I tried to reach in to grab her, but she came at us swiping razor-claws and hissing and biting.

Finally, the veterinarian had me lock him in the car with the pet carrier. He bravely reached in, grabbed her by the scruff of her neck, pulled her out, shot her up, then thrust her back in the carrier, all in about ten seconds. I think he suffered a few scratches; the next year, his rabies clinic was noticeably absent on the community calendar.

So when we discussed our options as her health declined, the thought of putting her in a carrier and taking her to a place she feared and hated just didn't appeal to us. I could imagine her getting chased around the examination room until three or four of us cornered her so she could get her final shot. She would probably have narrowed her green eyes at us as if to say, “I knew it! I always knew you would do this to me in the end!”

When we came home the other night, her last night, she walked around shakily and somewhat delirious with ragged, heavy breathing. We tried to feed her bits of chicken by hand, give her water with a teaspoon, but she demurred. St. Pauli Girl held her in her lap for awhile before passing her over to me. I held her and thought her breathing was a little easier. She seemed almost normal for those few moments, albeit very skinny. She sat in my lap for an hour then stood up, ready to leave just like she always did. I tried to hold on to her, but she had other plans. I put her on the ground, and she made her way to a cool hiding place in the shed where she spent the night. She passed away the next morning not long after sunrise, as if she had purposely waited for us to wake up and come say goodbye.

I'm not going to say that she had a peaceful, painless death. But spending her last few minutes in terror at a place she hated wouldn't have necessarily been more peaceful. In the end, I think the three of us agreed it was the right way to go. We got to spend some quality time with her, and she got to go out on her own, in her own home.

So the death of a fifteen-year-old cat isn't really that sad; it's the stress, the agony of those final choices that you have to face. And really, that's mostly a just a harsh reminder of similar decisions we will someday have to make with our human loved ones.