This is the cat that killed the rat

.......that lay in the house that Jack built.

Yesterday we all set to work on the house preparing for the arrival of different contractors coming to give bids on some house issues. Closets stay pretty clean and organized but there's nothing quite like people looking in every closet you've got to bring out the critical eye harbored within. The girls' closet was tackled first. Since we have no clothes in closets due to the everybody closet the 2 remaining empty closets have become storage, for the most part. They house mostly school curriculum and a few out of season clothes along with children's personal cubby space. Evye's tends to get a little out of control due to her desire to make a memoir out of absolutely everything, from sentimental construction paper to blades of grass. Once again, we paired it down and brought it back under control...allowing her to decide and prioritize what exactly had meaning and what was just crap.

Having completed the girls' closet with girls working hard and rearranging nursery furniture I moved on to work on the boys'. The boys' closet is housed in the children's bathroom since the "girls'" bathroom is, for all practical purposes, out of commission in every way. The sink doesn't drain, the bathtub doesn't run hot water and the commode regularly overflows. It's basically a waste of a space the size of a small closet....seeing as how I can't even fit in there at the current moment with my twin sized stomach. The boys' closet would be where the mouse resides. In all of my ignorance and lack of brain function I never really thought about the possibility of the mouse actually showing up in my cleaning endeavors. The more I cleaned the more grossed out and appalled I became at the sheer amount of mouse poop all over the closet. Despite the fact we had cleaned when the mouse was discovered a week ago I drug out absolutely everything yesterday and discovered pounds of poopage that had gone previously undetected. The more I found the more determined and focused I became. So, I sat to work moving and vacuuming and cleaning and disinfecting in every way. When I discovered it on all of the shelves I finally called shop husband in and asked him if one sticky trap was really all that was needed since it was scattered on floor to every shelf up to the very top regions of the closet. He said we definitely needed at least one more, if not two, and set out to go fetch some more traps. He'd only had time to make it as far as the living area before an entirely fat, gray, largely sized mouse went hauling butt across the bathroom floor. Let it be known that pregnancy does not inhibit movement in any way when a mouse shows up on the scene. I screamed, danced a jig and went running. Unafraid husband stood there laughing, quite entertained by the whole scene that greeted him. He said to grab Poppy...the cat we named thinking HE was a she....as husband went striding in there in all confidence, ready to wage war with the ominous and evasive mouse/rat. I opened the door and chunked the sleepy Poppy within so cat, mouse and husband could do their thing. Poppy sent out horrific sounding meows over the injustice of being awakened from a good nap, thrown into a bathroom and having the door shut on him. Long minutes went by as I tried to envision the scene taking place within with husband, cat and mouse. Apparently cat was totally disinterested in mouse. Sooo....why exactly do we keep these animals around????

With mouse going completely psycho at this point it sought protection behind shower curtain. With Brad giving blow by blow descriptions it seemed this wasn't going so well. He lifted the shower curtain to reveal mouse to cat only to find mouse was no longer behind curtain. He shook the curtain about the time the mouse fell off the shower curtain. I thought I was going to puke. He CLIMBS our shower curtain at night????!!!! Mouse hit the floor once more and went running directly under cat. Distraught cat suddenly started to figure out he might be in there for a reason and within a mere second had mouse in mouth. Brad yelled triumphantly behind closed door.."He got it!!! He really got it!!!!" Me, on the safe side, continually asking...."Is he dead yet??? Is playing with him or did he kill him yet??" After a few very long seconds...probably close to a whole minute...husband finally says, "Yep...he's definitely dead." I cautiously open the door and a proud cat struts out with prize in mouth and proceeds to plop down on the living room floor with it. Just plain nasty in every regard. Kids go after cat to toss his butt outside but cat goes running with mouse still in mouth. The chase was on to catch cat and somehow I get the honor of corralling him and carrying him to the backdoor. Holding him at arm's length I toss him out the backdoor and he proceeds to lay down right next to the door and devour the mouse. And he licks our kids???!!! Ugh!!!! Eager little boys continually running in and out to give gruesome details on the state of the mouse and just how much was gone. Finally. After cat had his fill he sauntered back into house, plopped back down on the couch he'd been so rudely awakened from and went right back to sleep.

But.....we no longer have a mouse in the house. Now to hope he has no cousins in the deal.