there's a mouse in the house

is a the blade of a shovel too obvious a grave marker?

i just finished painting the names of the murdered mouse family on a rusty shovel that long ago lost its handle.

Velvet
Benny
Matilda
&
Miracle Mouse Sparky

miracle because he survived the unthinkable. hard to believe that only a week's transpired since all that. it all started over ice cream and laundry. i was in the basement loading up the washer and my sister stopped over asking if i wanted to go get a twist with sprinkles. need you ask? i either left the basement door open or never closed it all the way. usually no big deal, but that night it resulted in mayhem. i came home to find what looked for all the world like the usual puked up grey hairball laying on the kitchen floor (they're never hairballs, by the way, you ever notice? they're hair logs). but it was a baby mouse and it was still alive. an infant so small his eyes weren't even open yet. he had two pin prick wounds on his temple. oh god.

so i held him on my lap and got on Facebook, the great purveyor of advice, and wrote "what do i do!?"

i never imagined that my cats' vet would be on and would respond instantly. it was 9:58 PM and yet she offered to meet me at the Cat Hospital to euthanize the poor baby. i cried the whole way there, racing, for some reason, as if i were saving his life instead of ending it. as i drove the jeep, moon shining down on us, i wondered if a baby mouse could get me out of a speeding ticket. velvet (i named him velvet - him because to me everything's a him until proven otherwise, don't ask me why) was nestled in a pocket of flannel meant to polish jewelry. his little pink winding sheet.

it was quite a scientific affair, euthanizing such a tiny baby. he went into a plastic cup to be anesthetized, the sort you'd put over someone's face. as i waited for dr. R to fill a syringe i lifted it to say a final goodbye and somehow flipped the cup and velvet went flying onto a metal shelf, much to my horror. i wasn't sure he needed killing after that. after we were sufficiently sure he was asleep (or already dead), dr. R made sure with a syringe of euthanasia, telling me that once a friend of hers had an injured mouse put to sleep at the local emergency hospital for the whopping heartless fee of $150. velvet died on the house. and we both returned to our friday evening.

i shouldn't have said it, but i did. "i hope i don't come home to find more." and i did.

but i couldn't call her out again for more mouse euthanasia. there was another one on the kitchen floor, really barely alive. and yet another where i suspected the nest was hidden in the little washing room of the basement. that one was covered in filth as if batted around like a hacky sack. yet when i picked him up he came to wild life, wriggling madly in my fingertips. i felt the need to wash him clean and did so carefully in the bathroom. my god, he was alive. i didn't know what to do with them (benny the weak and sparky the lively). so i turned to Google. surely there is some homemade way to make euthanasia. i looked at my shelves. a cotton ball of alcohol? nail polish remover? how do you kill a mouse? it made me sick to even have to do it. of course you can do it quickly with the drop of a brick or the roll of a tire, but i couldn't. if only they could just go to sleep. and i found it, you could mix white vinegar (i had it) and baking soda (i had that, too) and the resulting gas would end their tiny lives. so i set it all up on the basement floor under a big flipped over tupperware, the babies nestled in my mom's soft brown alaskan winter hat. it was supposed to be over in 20 minutes. an hour later i checked and it was anything but over. they were no less alive. now, what do i do at midnight? i left them in their woolen nest and hoped their mother would find and haul them back home.

they were my first thought in the morning. surely they would be gone or dead. but again, they were neither.

OK, now i owe it to them to save them. so i Googled yet again and read how to save a baby mouse's life. i got artist's paintbrushes and kitten formula and raced back home. they'd already been 12 hours without their mother. but when i got back, benny had died. sparky? he was one miracle mouse. he was squeaking at me and wriggling. i held him - he was no bigger than half my forefinger - and dipped the brush in warmed formula and offered it. i decided he was a very smart mouse. he understood and drank. once he was sated, i warmed a disk in the microwave that would keep him warm and i put the whole operation in an large antique domed brass birdcage where i hoped he'd be safe from the very curious cats. it seemed perfect.

every two hours, the internet told me. i had to feed sparky every two hours. now, i was willing to go to great lengths for this little spunky guy, but all night wasn't one of those things. so i fed him all i could all day long and decided he'd just have to make it through the night or not. of course he did.

at first i expected him to be dead every time i looked into his woolly nest, but he just kept on living and getting stronger, a little bigger, a little squeakier. he knew my fingertips meant food. his eyes never did open in the 4 days of our time together, but he had fine velvety grey fur. these two things told me he was between 10-14 days old.

there are things you never imagine yourself doing in your lifetime. i mean, it never even enters your head. washing a baby mouse's face is one of them. i learned to wash the formula off his face with the wet tip of a Q-tip and then flip it over to the dry side and rub his belly to massage his digestive system into action. it was comical, being proud that a mouse peed and pooped for me. i kept him nice and clean and warm and i'd panic when i misplaced the damn paintbrush. his Esso tiger coffee cup was heated a dozen times a day, his disk nuked for heat, his bedclothes washed.  one night a cat knocked his birdcage off my bureau at 2 AM and i crawled all over my rug begging to find him. so far he'd survived a cat attack, my pathetic attempt to euthanize him, a night on a dank cement floor with his dying brother, no mother (i found her dead too and named her Matilda after the mouse in the video who taught me how to care for him). he survived being knocked to the floor and my bumbling attempts to successfully feed him, sometimes almost drowning him in formula.

on sunday sparky attended a cookout. i had no choice, i couldn't leave him unfed in a house full of murderous cats for hours. so he rode in the footwell of the Jeep under the heat and was easily the most unexpected party guest in history. it was awkward explaining why i was carrying a birdcage; um, yes, it's a baby mouse i'm trying to rescue, but the in-laws took it in stride. they already knew i am a little crazy. or a lot. as sparky slept after a feeding, someone's iced tea glass teetered on the edge of a table and toppled onto him, nearly drowning him. sparky was sure using up his nine lives, if mice have nine lives. the children were fascinated by the party guest and that pleased me. i doubt they will ever forget the day a mouse came to a cookout.

as the days went on, i grew more confident. i announced my endeavors on Facebook and suddenly sparky had a huge following rooting for him between my page and that of my kitten Bug. who knew that so many people would be charmed by a baby mouse? some of them would start their days checking their smart phones to see how sparky was faring. each day i'd say "well, sparky survived another night....". and sparky went to work with me. again, i had no choice. he slept in a box on my desk on monday and i later took him to therapy, where my shrink was enthralled. he gave me a glass terrarium for better mouse protection. sparky was chalking up the 'firsts'. first mouse ever to attend a cookout. to go to work. to go to therapy. he was on a roll.

 the internet told me wild baby mice need immediate care, within 2 hours, in order to survive. and here i'd wasted that time trying to euthanize sparky and benny and then leaving them for their mother to find, not knowing she was already dead too. but sparky was going strong. the stats told me he had a 5-25% chance of survival, but as the days passed i got cocky. my mouse was going to live. i started shopping online for mouse habitats and mouse exercise wheels and worrying that i would save him only to have a cat kill him down the line. but if he lived, would he live one year or several? i'd make him live several! i was, after all, now an expert and so was he. he'd grab the paintbrush and suck and i'd wash his face, rub his belly and clean his butt. the internet warned of the dangers of bloat. bloat could kill. i began to wonder how anyone ever had a second child after going through this kind of thing with a first. so much attention, so much worry, so much time.

sparky rewarded me with so much life. frankie and tad did not care that i was feeding a mouse, they just wanted room in my lap. beanie and big, the great hunters and no doubt reason for sparky's circumstances, sat with huge eyes that transmitted their incomprehension. they give me dead mice for presents, after all. why were they not allowed to murder this one? better still, why was i feeding it? i could tell benie was just beside himself. after all, it was on my lap.

but tuesday was another story. sparky was lethargic. i had to wake him to eat and he was ornery about it. and he smelled funny. i thought maybe i hadn't cleaned him well enough. but his poop was weird too. it wasn't regular mouse poop, it was pale and soft. is this what bloat does? i massaged and massaged his belly. we went to work and i ignored emails to tend to my mouse. someone came to see me and apparently knows me well, because he didn't blink an eye when he found me feeding a mouse with a paintbrush at my computer. i was going to devote my day to making sure he improved but my plans were thwarted by students, new students arriving at the college and not enough staff to help down at the big track and tennis facility where they checked in. so i had to go. at noon i ate pizza and fed sparky in the equipment room. still not eating well, still not squeaking or wriggling like just last night. i had to sit for hours in a steamy airless building waiting on parents and students, sparky in a box at my feet. again, at 2 PM i decided i have priorities, and my mouse was it. we went out back to a picnic table in the cool shade but i was immediately troubled. he was not interested in food and should have been, always was before. i offered the paintbrush, flicked away gnats, rubbed his belly, checked his heating disk. was he too hot or cold? did he have enough air? again, he smelled funny. i begged him, sparky just hang on until i get out of here and i will spend every waking minute on you.

at 4 PM we were allowed to close up shop and i gathered my things. my boss, sucking on a candy, asked what i had in the box. a mouse, i said. "a mouse for a computer?" he asked. um, no a real mouse. "can i see?" a little embarrassed and with some hesitation, i opened the cover wide to show him. "he doesn't look so good," he said.

sparky was dead. i poked gently with a finger to make sure, but i didn't even have to. it was pretty obvious. he was still warm. "i'm going home to cry now", i told them, and walked to the exit holding my mouse box while tears blinded me. my dead sparky. in my Jeep i started crying and bawled all the way home on the back roads. i blamed the students, i blamed Central Check-In and the heat and the airlessness and the fact that i couldn't check on him or feed him as often as i would have otherwise.

what did i do wrong? was the formula too strong? didn't i rub his belly enough? was it because i let him go overnight without a feeding? had i been too over-cofident and not vigilant enough? i laid sparky to rest with his siblings velvet and benny and his mother matilda in the pink flannel in a little tupperware. i guess the fact that i'd never buried them yet showed that i was not overly confident. i saved them so they could all be buried together.

and so they were. under the pear tree beside my bunny gianni. they were protected with a sheet of plastic for a week to keep scavenging predators out (once one dug up and stole my baby bunny). i know it's all the cycle of life, it's nature. i know the odds were stacked against us and i know i did all i could. but all that makes it no easier. i had bonded with that little mouse and as far as he knew, i was his mommy. he was my charge, his life depended on me for 4 days and i failed.  it was tough breaking the news to his eager Facebook fans who were already clamoring for a sparky page all his own. it was pretty amazing to know that other people cried for sparky. my pages filled up with condolences, with tears and hearts and assurances that i'd done all i could, more than most would have.

sparky died on my 'cancer-versary'. four years earlier on august 27th i was diagnosed with breast cancer.  at first when he died i thought what a shitty gift to get on this day. and then i realized, it was a wonderful four day gift to have had him at all. 

i didn't try to save sparky's life for any other reason than i thought i owed it to him after all my cats and i had put him through. i mean, hell, i'd tried to kill him. i wasn't noble. no one except my shrink even knew i'd first tried my hand at homegrown euthanasia. and so that haunts me too. what if i weakened him in those wasted our with that ridiculous gassing? people gave me credit for having such a pure heart and such kindness. they blessed me and declared me an angel. but just like my "About Me" says on this blog, i'm just a person. i don't know how someone else could drop a brick or roll a tire over a baby mouse, i just knew i couldn't. and if i couldn't do that, i couldn't also just let him die a slow death of starvation and dehydration. so that meant only one thing. i had to try.

and sparky rewarded me (and so many others) for those efforts. so vulnerable, so fragile, so tiny. that little spark of life left a huge mouseprint on me and i will never forget those 4 days in august.

the cat whisperer

i almost lost my standing as the Cat Whisperer tonight.

a friend of mine told me yesterday that his house had been over-run with fleas and immediately my skin crawled. although i have not seen a flea in my house of 6 cats, i was taking no chances. i flew to the Cat Hospital after work and purchased a 6-pack of flea killer for kitties. i will have none of those insect vermin invading my house. my Fear stems from childhood. i don't think my parents had any idea about flea control. after all, they had no idea litterboxes existed. when i was about 9, getting ready for school one morning, i pulled on my kneesocks and could literally see the fleas jumping on and off them. That sight is burned unpleasantly into my memory.

so i rounded up the herd one by one and squirted Vectra on the backs of their necks. most of them were easy to catch and treat, although Big (the 20 pounder) was uncannily suspicious when i sweetly sing-songed his name, hanging out of reach under the kitchen table until i tricked him. food is the trick. he's a sucker for food.

but Mosby was the hold-out. Mosby, if you know your civil war history, is named after major mosby, otherwise known as the "grey ghost". alot more appropriate the Mister Kitty, the name he came with from the shelter. Mister Kitty and his sister, Miss Kitty, lost their home when a foolish woman gave up her cats for the sake of a boyfriend. no human, in my opinion, is worth abandoning your pet. but abandon them she did. they were unceremoniously returned at age 3 to the shelter where they'd come from originally. victims of a woman's insecurity and the ultimatum of a selfish boyfriend. Mister and Miss Kitty had been caught in the wild as kittens, right on the cusp of becoming feral. perhaps Mister Kitty never shed his feral kittenhood entirely, or perhaps he was mistreated by The Boyfriend before he came to the shelter. all i know is that he was unreasonably terrified of people, clinging to his sister and never coming out of the shelter of a cat house during the day. since i volunteered at the shelter, i made him my project.

they dubbed me 'the cat whisperer' at the shelter because i was somehow able to bond with even the most antisocial and frightened cats. even the cats with "STAFF ONLY - Vicious" posted in orange on their cages. i had the time to spend with them, the staff did not. and so i was consistently pleased to report back to them that so-and-so was now approachable. it only took patience, quiet tones, and knowing when it was finally OK to pet. i was only attacked once in all my 7 years there, and that was by a cat in the front room who'd been cleared for adoption! i shudder to think what his fate was after that. once they draw blood there's no telling.

on every visit i would try to assuage Mister Kitty's terror, reaching behind his sister to gently pet him after i'd allowed him to sniff my hand. but every time he acted as though he'd never seen me before and i had to start all over again. as i stroked his fur he lay rigid, eyes huge and dilated. because it was a No-Kill shelter he was allowed to live. for six months i visited him, sometimes dismayed by my inability to bring him around. he obviously could not tolerate the constant comings and goings of people and other cats. the shelter tried to offer the two of them together - two for the price of one, convinced he could not survive on his own without the comfort of his sister. one week, to my delight, they were adopted. the next week they were back. rejected.

finally there was talk of euthanasia. there seemed to be no hope for Mister and Miss Kitty. the shelter could not afford to keep them on indefinitely. i pleaded with my husband, please at least come meet Mister Kitty. they're going to kill him. bob relented and accompanied me to the shelter. the siblings were sequestered this time in a large metal cage and Mister Kitty was, as usual, hidden in a box, peering out of a round hole. bob took one look at those eyes, so full of pathos, and said 'oh OK, bring him home, goddammit.' and so with much difficulty we tugged the frightened cat out of his box and stuffed him into a carrier. Miss Kitty was left to fend for herself and was adopted within the week.

all day i sat at work pondering names. what to call him? mouse? he was timid and grey after all. then i hit upon Mosby. when i got home bob announced, "i know what to call him - Mosby!" we'd independently come up with the same name. Mosby lived for several days locked in my computer room alone with food, a litterbox, and only my visits for company. cats respond to this treatment. suddenly you are their only living link in the world and they decide you're not so bad after all. i cried with happiness when Mosby sat beside me on the couch and suddenly trusted me so much he laid on his back, baring his belly. almost smiling. within a week we gave him free range of the house and he was soon adopted by Mattie, the big brother cat of the house, who licked him and bonded. we thought it was a milestone when he allowed us to walk by him and he didn't run. we were astonished when he'd rub up against our legs. years went by and he came around of his own accord. everything had to be on his terms, but that was OK. sometimes i could even catch and hold him and eventually his stiff body would relax and he'd purr.

nowadays Mosby has decided i am safest approached while on the toilet. i don't know how he figured out that i couldn't easily catch him from that seat, but he did. so every morning we have the love ritual on the toilet. sometimes on a chilly morning he will leap onto the couch to head butt me and allows me to pet him. on those mornings my heart swells. he trusts me. i've never shown him any reason not to. but old habits die hard in a cat that once clearly had a hard life. he is still far more comfortable in the company of his fellow cats, still a baby enjoying the head-lickings Big gives him since Mattie died. but i've been his accepted human for 5 years now and i've considered it an honor. bob was too when he was alive. but he plied Mosby with bits of steak from his dinner, so he cheated.

getting Mosby to the vet is a once a year chore i don't relish. tonight i just realized that flea treatment is too. like Big, he suspected something was up when i sing-songed his name and tried to corner him. he was having none of it. plump as he now is, he hurdled upstairs and vanished into the spare bedroom. not a sign of him. i closed the door, certain he was in there, and looked under the bed from all sides. i suddenly realized the fabric of the mattress was hanging like a hammock and staring out at me were those big round terrified eyes. i used my best calm-a-cat voice but something about being that cornered made him turn like i've never seen before. i've heard the plaintive howls, but never before were they accompanied by hissing and spitting. and that's what i now faced. i couldn't really take him seriously. after all he's spent his life as a gentle and timid ghost. but when i reached into his dark hammock i discovered a whole new side of him. as if the feral ghost had risen. he lashed out at me with teeth and claws. i stood my ground, however taken aback, and pulled him out by the scruff of the neck and plunked him on the bed. i might as well have been handling a hellcat. only a blanket over his head stilled him and he realized his battle was lost. i still don't understand why there was a battle. flea treatment squirted onto his neck, i let him go. he just lay there looking at me, hurt and betrayal in his eyes it seemed. then i left the room.

Mosby rushed to the safety of the outdoor cat cage where he lay like a meatloaf in a hay box. he wasn't over the ordeal and i knew i had to regain his confidence. i crept into the cage and used my softest cat whispering voice. it's OK, Mosey, i would never hurt you. i didn't mean to scare you. it's just me, Mose. his ears were back and his nose buried in his paws, obviously hoping i'd get lost. as a hummingbird whirred in the trumpet vines nearby i tenderly stroked between his ears. ran my hand over his back over and over, talking quietly. as his ears relented and came forward i tickled under his chin. then i heard it. the purr. i had won his heart and trust again. we sat there in the big cage and i ignored mosquito bites so that a sudden slap on skin wouldn't set him off again. my half-feral childcat came around and looked up at me, his eyes soft now and almost apologetic. his velvety body relaxed under my hand and after i knew he remembered i am "safe" i carefully took my leave. he watched after me and i told him he was very brave. for years he has associated "very brave" with something good.

pink Hello Kitty bandaids now cover my various bite wounds and an impressive scratch runs down the tender inside of my arm. i have a lot more respect for the grey ghost now and i think it would be best if i practiced more togetherness with him so we don't have a repeat performance of terror and pain in two weeks when he's due for a trip to the vet. perhaps i have neglected the velveteen cat and though i won't lick his head, i will bond more with him in the days to come. i have learned the lesson of Siegfried & Roy. the title of Cat Whisperer is a tenuous one.