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plot | Poem

 
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The Plot

by Paul Kesler

There is obviously a conspiracy against our house cat on the part of the
local mice. It's been building for some time, according to my wife, Marta, who became aware of the plot last fall and began taking notes.

The first sign came in October, when Marta was in the basement and noticed catnip on the bar of a mousetrap. Nothing had sprung, but a few strands of cat hairs were scattered nearby, clear indications that the wary feline had explored the area intently.

A few weeks later I'd been cleaning up the work room, putting away some tools, when I found a small swastika of mouse turds on a patch of sawdust. The impudent message, "Your cat's tongue," was scrawled in a circle around it, like the prototype for some revolutionist's banner. I kicked at the spot, showering the room with shavings, and thought I heard scampering from the walls.

In mid-November we woke one night to some pitiful squeals from the kitchen. Jumping from bed, we discovered the cat wrapped head to foot in an afghan of cobwebs. Apparently, a trap had been set by the rodents and some hairy arachnids, a suspicion confirmed two days later. Returning from work, we found a small hammock of spider webs dangling in the kitchen, near the corner where the cat sleeps. Suspended two inches from the floor, it looped from obscure indentations in the walls to a leg of the central table. It was their second attempt in three days, and Marta and I destroyed the contraption.

In the ensuing months they've continued their assaults. At one point, they built an elaborate guillotine, with the ironic touch of a cheese-cutting wire for a chopper. When the cat put its paw on the rigged device, a pulley would be activated and the wire, clamped in a metal frame, would plummet from a two-foot height. The cat was never caught, but came close one night when it limped through the doorway of our living room
and curled about our feet. Looking down, I could see the telltale indention in its neck fur.

It was when they started the formations that we became truly alarmed. Ranked in stiff columns, they would march across the basement in the dead of night, setting up a crunching sound. And then the field maneuvers, which recalled passages in Von Clausewitz, but which Marta said were from Sun Tsu. I'm getting out my war diaries, in some vague attempt to see what they're up to.

Meanwhile, we've loaned our cat to the vet, in the hope we can exterminate the mice before they're completely out of hand. But the food is disappearing, and the mice are not. There's no doubt that unless we improve our tactics, we will lose this war.

to Paul  ~ to Moongate