A surprise visit by a temporary pet

When you got a tomcat in your house, no matter if he has balls anymore or not, he will sooner or later bring you dead mice. Ok, that’s fine. You show him your appreciation of how he tries to take care for you and dispose of the mice when he doesn’t see it. But once in a while he will be dragging half dead prey into your house. You can try to not let this happen be paying attention to whether he has something in his mouth or not, but sooner or later you will misjudge that. Or it’s just summer and the door to the terrace is open anyways and you won’t be around.
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.

Cat content

I just had a short phone call with a good friend some minutes ago. When I told him that I actually started a blog, he cracked up and told me I should post pictures of our cats. Of course I sensed he was mocking on something and so he told me that "cat content" is used to describe the typical, crappy blog content of people that post pictures of their pets and tell you how lovely they look and are. Something the world needs to know, especially from strangers.
I promised him to add some cat content and here we go!

This is what a former neighbour, aka the hysteric housewife, called the "grey panther". He is now about 12 years old and still manages to catch adult, seemingly healthy birds. Cats are often accused of being a threat to birds, but a healthy adult bird usually is way too attentive to get caught by a cat, hence most birds caught by cats were going to die anyway or are rather young. And I do agree the latter case is a problem, as much as nest robbery by cats.
He was supposedly abandoned by a chartreux breeder. What really happened we don't know, but he perfectly matches the description of a chartreux in looks and behavior, except for some impurities like slight rings on his tail and the eye color. After straying around in the same area for some time he ended in the animal shelter and after some time in quarantine had the pleasure to be taken home by my girlfriend. He must have really suffered hunger throughout his first 5-6 months, as he jumped on anything eatable in the beginning. Letting the eye slip off him ended in stolen eggs, the funny image of a tomcat carrying a pack of toast in his mouth that's been broader than he was long and stolen potato peel. Yes, he ate potato peel and sometimes even flower soil. When he stole a pack of coffee the hissing sound of the air flowing back into the evacuated package was likely the only thing keeping him from eating that, too. Over time his eager assaults towards anything eatable wore off, though given a good chance he was still a threat to a tasty plate with meat on it.
The only things that make him lose his worldly-wise aura are vacuum cleaners. His preferred places are the bedroom, which is locked because he can open doors if he feels the need for it, my seat in front of the PC and my lap, likely in this order. While he fled at the slightest movement in the beginning he has grown enough trust over the last three years that I now can even pet his belly without him retreating immediately.

His "official" name is Lupo, because he often has the typical look of a wolf, head faced towards the ground while looking forward. He is often referred to as Doctor Katz, though, since I could persuade him to stop hiding in the bookshelf by telling him that he was hiding behind the row with the most trivial literature in the house and that this should be below his standards.
He weighs about six metric pounds and tends to drool quite intensively when he is petted and enjoying it.

This little girl has refused to be called Gizmo and chose to only listen to the name "Mogli", despite being a female. Also coming from the girly side of the household, she was found the best of all women's ex BF lying in the bushes, just some weeks old, after falling down from a balcony on the fourth floor. Being rather shy in general, she immediately crawled from under the sofa and meowed loudly when the best of all women entered the room. This was the start of a life long, intense relationship. She's mommy's cat. Even after I took care of her for three months while the best of all women's household had moved without the woman, she immediately was joyfully running around mommy's feet when she saw her. Say again cats would be just focused on places and not people...
She's now 20, completely deaf since a year and needs a slight bit of heart medication. Recently she stopped taking car of her hair which leaves this unenjoyable task for her to me. Despite that you couldn't tell her age, not even from her still complete teeth. She never really hunted anything, likely because she never needed to and her ancestry is made of indoor cats only. Unlike the tomcat vacuum cleaners never scared her, but instead anything with a small electric motor. The electric toothbrush was an agonizing threat back when she could hear.
After going deaf she really amazed me by learning to decide whether mommy follows her by looking into the mirroring windows in the evening. She might not have any idea that she sees a reflection of herself and who walks behind her, but depending on what she sees or sees not, she is able to decide whether to turn around and meow or not. Believe me, I tried to find better explanations, but after witnessing this more than a dozen times I am sure that she really judes by the window reflection. And she's learned that at the age of 19.