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.