27 June 2022

Cat in a murderous mood

Sometimes weeks pass without me having any reason to believe the cat has caught anything. And sometimes she is just on a killing spree. I hadn't seen her with any rodent for a long time when suddenly she walked into my office with a mouse in her mouth. She looked at me meaningfully, and then dropped the poor thing on the floor (quite like she had done the very first time). Quite some time of classic cat and mouse chase followed. And in the end, she noisily ate it in the middle of the office.

The next day she did it again. And when I later got into the bedroom, I found another half mouse. This was a different one! She had been active.

The cat showing off a dead mouse

Found this in the bedroom

That night I struggle to sleep. And the cat wasn't interested in joining me either. At some point I heard all sorts of crunching noises coming out of the office. I did check as I wasn't sleeping anyway; of course she was eating yet another mouse. I went back to bed. And then had to listen to another chase and a lot of squeaking. She was going through them rather quickly now! I seem to vaguely remember I thought, but as I must've been half asleep I'm not sure. And she did join me at some point.

When I woke up in the morning she wasn't there anymore. I found her sitting at the foot of the bed. That was a bit unusual. I suspect that there was yet another mouse. And when I opened the curtains I found out that was indeed the case. That was where the mouse has been hiding! This was relentless.

It probably requires full screen mode to find the mouse...

The next day I was away from home most of the time; I was in the office (on campus) during the day and went for a walk with Kate in the evening. But when I came back from either of them, I did not find any severed mouse heads or other indications of continuing slaughter. I thought maybe it had been just a phase! But this lady had clearly not forgot yet how to hunt.

The day after the quiet day all bets were off again. When I woke up she had another shrew in my bedroom. And cats don't tend to eat shrews. I got pity on the poor thing and sneakily caught it myself. The cat wasn't even following me when I brought it outside. I brought it to the downstairs garden, and released it into dense vegetation. I supposed that would do the job. I went back inside and soon I was working away at my computer. And then I heard a familiar sound. Squeaking! She was chasing a shrew again. I had the feeling it might be the very same one. She was just showing me I could try to interfere, but the person deciding the fate of the shrew would be her. I had no way of verifying, of course, whether this was the same shrew! I just think it was. And it didn't survive. I tried, little shrew! But Mevrouw Moor is a skilled killer…

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