So one day the cat stormed in through the front door unexpectedly and filled with joy and happiness. The attempt to tell us about his findings made them drop from his mouth and so he chased down the mouse fallen out of there. He got a good hit and so she flew over the stairs to the basement, with an audible impact on the wall. He couldn’t see her anymore, searched around a bit and then lost interest. So now there was a mouse sitting on our basement stairs, not moving, but heavily breathing and seemingly not too harmed. I took the poor being and saw it was actually not visibly hurt, but of course frightened as hell. I took her with me on the terrace, where the one who brought it was sleeping already. Yeah, so you have a half dead half alive mouse now and what’cha gonna do?
The options were clear. He was asleep, the female cat would have been unable to kill it. I could finish it off to end her suffering, take it to a vet, lay it don outside and let nature be nature or try to nurse it back to health. Of course there’s lots of ethical questions arising if you are about to decide over life and death of a being, especially if it has a spine. I am too much a pussy to kill an animal that still seems quite alive and as it started to move around a bit in my hand while I was considering options, I decided to try nursing it back to a proper condition, even if it might be painfully prolonging the inevitable.
After another minute it was another bit more lively and so I fetched a not too small box to put it in so it couldn’t flee and hide in some inaccessible place to die. Some ripped cloth gave it the option to hide while my GF and I were considering what kind of food we should offer it. It got corn, wheat and cat food to choose from, along with some water, but decided to stay on its not too healthy diet of eating nothing at all.
During the evening I looked after it from time to time and noticed its body temperature had been declining quite a bit and it also had a stain of blood at its rear end. My inital thought was that the mouse has suffered from some form of inner damage while being dragged around in the tomcat’s mouth, but that was later proven wrong. I decided to keep her warm in my hand and additionally warm her a bit with my breath. She at least stayed alive until I decided that sleep’s not just good for the mouse, but also for me.
The next morning it was not in its box anymore and I was wondering how the heck it has gotten out of there. But obviously that was a good sign as a dead mouse would have not gotten out. I soon saw that it was sitting on my Airtport Extreme base and had taking a good crap on it, too. I liked its attitude to poop on the only Apple device and finally grabbed her after some chasing over my table. She got a bigger box and a fresh buffet. Over the night she must have by the way eaten some of the cat food and also some of the corn.
Later that day I wasn’t attentive enough when my GF entered the room and left the door open. If you have ever lived with a cat you know how they react to boxes. And of course the harmless female one jumped inside the box and just enjoyed sitting there, unaware of the fact that she was not alone there. After getting the cat out I saw quite some bloody mess before I found the mouse in the box. Obviously it was a she and she has been pregnant. The presence of the cat has likely induced quite a lot of stress and the bloody mess was the early end of her pregnancy.
After that she was soon coming back to be as lively as you would suspect it from a wild mouse, though. She ate quite a bit and started to not act too shy anymore. At the end of the day I could just sit her on my hand and pet her a bit without her trying to flee. That’s obviously been a privilege though, as the mere presence of my GF still frightened her. After another night in the bigger box and finding her running around my room fast and happily the morning after we decided she should be fit enough to be sat outside again.
I of course thought of keeping her for a moment, but it was obviously not really possible. For one the presence of the cats in the house would have likely been too stressful for her and at least the tomcat. Separating them would have meant that I would have to give up the tomcat as a lap warmer. Also, a mouse that’s been living in the wild does never really adapt to being caged. If you want to keep it under conditions that are not rather torturous, you should have a cage of at least some dozen square meters. We don’t even have several dozens for ourselves and call it our house none the less.
The next evening I pet the mouse good bye and sat her in our garden, while the cats were secured in their room. After a minute she started to move around and explore her surroundings. After another minute she was somewhere under some bushes in an edge of the garden.
I would love to know what happened to her but as so often in live, that’s an answer I won’t get.
No comments:
Post a Comment