There was something I wanted from the cellar. I forget what. I walked to the stairs, turned on the light and froze. An animal was coming up the stairs. It froze too.
In fact, we sort of mimicked each other’s body language for several seconds. I froze, it froze. It was like looking into a funhouse mirror that changes your reflected image into a mouse.
Mice are animals. They are wild animals, usually. They are mammals, what do I know, they can transmit rabies and shit.
I turned, slowly, and crouched to grab, what? Nothing in range. A dish, I could trap it under a dish and release it outside.
It turned, slowly, and crouched.
I leaned over and picked up a catfood dish.
The mouse darted under a cabinet. Fucker.
The can-fed red cat watched all this.
Come here, stupid. There, under the cabinet.
The cat sat and watched.
I picked him up. Pointed him towards the mouse like an uzi. Get him. Go for it.
Set him down beside the cabinet. He looked up at me. There!
I tapped my fingers along the base of the cabinet, the cat finally got the idea. Maybe he heard something running around underneath. I looked around for better equipment. Took a couple steps further down into the cellar.
The cat looked left. At just that instant, the mouse outflanked the cat, running past its right side and down the stairs.
It either hid behind the vaccuum cleaner, or went into the laundry room.
I am like, I am not the sort of man who stomps on little mice as they run past, especially not barefoot. And mice are usually barefoot.
I started moving the vaccuum, then thought, what happens if it is, indeed, behind there? i am wearing no socks, and baggy pants, it could run straight up the inside of my jeans into my boxers.
So I picked up a push broom instead. It turned out to be our broom where the broom part falls off the handle when you pick it up. So in fact, I stood there holding a stick.
This must be how billiards was invented. It’s logical. You’re sitting around the drawing room, your butler is chasing some mice around the room with a stick, they end up on the table, he’s poking at them. Maybe you’re poking at them too, maybe you have a fireplace poker in fact.
Maybe the last mouse you poke is the eight mouse.
Gamma liked this story. She is on the mouse’s side. She forbids traps. She doesn’t even like us to swat flies right now, so it’s mice and flies as far as the eye can see at our house right now.
The cats are okay with that, too.
It’s a fat little grey mouse, I told her.
You’re a fat little grey mouse, she told me.