HypnoBirthing Blog

I caught a mouse

I caught a mouse.  Or, to be more precise, Archie did.  Or, to be even more precise, Cleo caught it first.

Archie is my friends and business partner.  Cleo is his cat.  And when I arrived at Archie’s house on Monday to talk about promotional leaflets and making CDs and all the other things we need to talk about when we get together he said:  ‘You should have got here sooner.’  So I immediately apologised for my tardiness, because I had meant to leave home earlier but, as usual, events overtook me and there were far more things that needed to be done before I left than I had expected.  ‘No’, he said.  ‘It’s not that.  A tiny mouse ran across the floor a little while ago, and I can’t catch a mouse on my own.  It takes two people to corner it.  Cleo has been bringing in lots of mice recently.  She brings them in live to present to me, and then just drops them and takes no more interest, so they scuttle into the nearest safe place.’

Later that evening when we were sitting quietly, a tiny little country mouse scuttled out from under the sofa and under a chair.  When we tipped up the chair, there it was, huddled up again the far side of the chair, and absolutely tiny.  A baby.  It shot into the hearth and hid behind the log basket.

Archie fetched a tea towel from the kitchen to throw over it so he could pick it up and take it out to the garden.  But the mouse, despite its tiny size, was made of sterner stuff.  As I moved the log basket it rushed along the back of the hearth and hid in the far corner.  When we moved some more things to find it, ready to pounce with the tea towel, it had completely disappeared.  It must have shot under the sofa.  Now the sofa is very heavy, so we settled down again until it chose to emerge.

It didn’t.  So I went to bed.  When I went into the bathroom, a small furry thing scuttled behind the wash basing.  Houdini mouse was exploring the house, unless it was another of Cleo’s prey.  I called Archie and we quietly approached the wash basin.  The mouse scuttled out and hid behind the loo.  There is not a lot of room for two people behind a loo, and when we had moved the toilet brush holder, the tiny mouse had disappeared again.  Must have squeezed through the infinitessimally small gap under the soil stack casing.

Next morning Archie went to the shops and I was sitting quietly working when Houdini Mouse emerged from under the sofa, scuttled across the floor again and hid under a chair.  I began to wonder how many mice there were in the house.  On Archie’s return, we tipped up the chair and there he was, huddled undernearth.  We put the chair down and fetched the tea towel, tipped up the chair again …. and there he wasn’t.  The chair had been in the middle of the room.  He certainly hadn’t run out from underneath it, so he must have scuttled up inside the chair cover; very difficult to find, and we might have squashed him so, leaving the chair in the middle of the room so we could see all round it, we waited.

Archie found a humane mousetrap in the laundry room, and put it close to the chair with some enticing cornflakes and nuts in it, and we settled down to work again, keeping a weather eye on the chair in case the mouse became tired of hiding.

An hour or so later I was in the kitchen making a cup of tea and Cleo, Archie’s cat, was quietly feeding from her bowl.  Suddenly she leapt into the corner under the kitchen units; an unusual action for her.  So I thought, ‘Mouse!’.  I called Archie and we tipped up something under the units and there he was.  Plainly this mouse was not only Houdini but an intrepid explorer as well; unless there was another kitchen mouse.  We moved the humane trap into the kitchen near where he was hiding, shut Cleo out in the garden, and waited again.

Time passed and Archie went into the kitchen and there, as bold as brass, was tiny mouse eating out of Cleo’s bowl.  The audacity of it!  Plainly cat food was much superior to corn flakes.  The mouse shot into a corner, and we moved the mousetrap into the small space behind the units.  Then Archie chivvied the mouse out of its hiding place and it shot straight behind the kitchen unit - and into the mouse trap.  Success!

Archie carried the mouse trap out into the garden, near the hedge, and tipped it up.  The mouse clung determinedly to the inside of the trap, but was finally tipped out and scuttled into the undergrowth.  We were filled with a glow of satisfaction and benevolence at having rescued this tiny creature from certain death by Cleo and went back into the house.

When we went outside to get into the car a little later, Cleo was sitting absolutely still in the corner of the front garden looking intently into the corner by the hedge.  Maybe she could catch a mouse?