On cat and mouse

You could call it Mousegate. Or the Mouseterious Case of the Disappearing Biscuits. The Cat has special biscuits because, well, she’s special. She’s a Maine Coon and prone to all sorts of ailments that the biscuits help ward off. They are bought at vast expense from the Animalerie at our not so local garden centre. She eats them sparingly, mostly because the poor love has only three teeth left and they are rather large… the biscuits, not the teeth. She is 13, which is positively ancient for a Maine Coon so the lack of teeth is not unexpected I suppose. Despite this, she is a ferocious hunter, which I confess came as a bit of a surprise. When we lived in our London flat just a few minutes from Richmond park and surrounded by gardens, she never once came home with any offerings. I did occasionally find a squashed frog on the front door step, but assumed that it belonged to my downstairs neighbour’s cat Freddie. Freddie was the terror of the local pigeons. He liked to bring them home, dispatch them and then liberally festoon her kitchen with them. Even the foxes eyed him warily. Himself was convinced that the only thing the Cat could catch was fleas. But since moving to the country, she has become an animal. An Animal, I tell you. We were rather proud. And congratulated ourselves on having a means of keeping the house pest-free. Ah, the naivety of it.

I issued prohibitions: no frogs, no lizards, and absolutely no birds. She blinked. And acquiesced… at least I think so. Only once has she come home with a bird, a huge pigeon. I have no idea how she got it through the catflap, given the drama of her comings and goings, owing to her wonky hip and insistence on poking the flap repeatedly with her paw before putting her head in so that the microchip in her neck can unlock it. The pigeon can’t have tasted very good, or perhaps it was just too fiddly to deal with because she left most of it. I was well onto my second spoonful of cereal and had not yet had a mouthful of coffee when I spied the carnage in the corner of the dining room. It was not a good start to the day. So, it’s mice. Really I’d prefer it not to be anything, but she is after all an animal. Some she eats whole. Others I find in various states of dismemberment… and always where you’re mostly likely to step on the remains unawares. And, as we have discovered, the odd one escapes.

Oh, Heaven. If you can ignore the presence of a fearsome three-toothed hunter, which this intrepid mouse managed to do. Having been city dwellers and living with a cat that seemed only to be proficient in catching fleas, a full bowl of biscuits, expensive special biscuits, remained out at all times. Just in case, you know, she needed a snack. This did not change on the move to the country, notwithstanding the now ready supply of fast food. The bowl was, and still is, dutifully topped up every morning. She never ate many, even when she had teeth. Suddenly, every morning the bowl was empty. I gave her a hard stare. She was looking suspiciously pyramidal. The empty bowl greeted me for, oh, at least a week. Then it came to me, just after I’d shooed her back outside with a not-dead mouse… perhaps someone else was eating the biscuits. I know, mind like a rapier, me.

The only place she could be hiding was under the kitchen cupboards. That meant removing the kick-boards. This should have been the work of a moment. But of course it wasn’t. Because someone had taken them off, painted them… yup, grey, and hadn’t put them back on correctly. Once off, and we could see underneath, there they were, row upon row of the Cat’s expensive special biscuits, neatly lined up against the back wall, tidily saved for later. I was almost tempted to let the mouse stay. Almost. Himself fetched the Cat, because you know that’s what a cat is for. To catch mice. The Cat looked at the biscuits all neatly stacked row upon row, turned tail and took to her bed. She refused to come out. There was nothing to be done but to get the vacuum cleaner, change it from suck to blow, and blow under the cupboards until the unfortunate mouse showed herself. We then created an alley with the kick-boards, threw open the kitchen door and blew her outside. I hasten to reassure you that the mouse was unharmed. The Cat pretended to sleep.

Did I mention that the Cat has allergies? She has allergies to things and allergies to the treatments for the things, fleas being one of the things. Owing to the unseasonably warm weather we’ve been having, we have had to keep treating her. Normally we’d take a winter break. The vet suggested a new three-month anti-flea medication. I dutifully applied it. Then I noticed that she had a few bald spots on her neck, a sure sign she was having a reaction to something. Off we went to the vet for a check up. In every circumstance where there is a requirement to speak and to speak French, I look up all the vocabulary I’m likely to need beforehand. Arrange it appropriately. And practise it all the way to the appointment. Often out loud. I studied French at school and stopped when I left at the age of 18, but am reliably surprised by how much I can recall. Whenever I meet a French person, I am determined to converse. I have no idea if I make any sense. Everyone is very kind and encouraging, and says my French is good. Really, it isn’t. I think they are surprised that a native English speaker is attempting to speak a language other than English. My Dad has a much better grasp of the language than I do. He knows tenses and everything. He says he learned girl-friend French. I did not probe too deeply.

We arrived. We waited. We were called through to the consultation room. The vet asked what seemed to be the trouble. I deployed all my vocab, accompanied by a bit of hand waving. Hand waving seems to help. “Ah, hmmm,” he said, as he looked up her records. “Let’s have a look at her.” We chatted all things Maine Coon. He lives with one too. He was well impressed with the Cat’s advanced age and not at all worried about her teeth. French vets, it seems, worry less about the state of cats’ teeth than English ones. An English vet is the reason the Cat has three teeth remaining. I congratulated him on his English. It is really very good indeed. And asked him if he’d spent time abroad. “No,” said he, “when I was a kid, I wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons. So I had to learn English. I bought my favourite books in English. As I already knew the story, I picked up the vocabulary pretty easily.” He suggested I do the same. “You could buy Sense and Sensitivity in French…” “Sense and Sensibility!” said I. How did he know? Maine Coons and Jane Austen. Uncanny. He even likes the films…

Our friends subscribed to one of the major French newspapers when they moved here in an effort to improve their French. I find all that small type a little daunting, so much prefer the idea of reading a favourite book in French. The online version of the Guardian newspaper is free. And in English. So I dip in and out of it. This article on Greek myths really struck a chord.  And reminded me to add the second and third books in Pat Barker’s Women of Troy trilogy to my wish list, possibly also in French. I really enjoyed The Silence of the Girls, the first in the series. And of course her Regeneration Trilogy. Here they are, my favourite restoration/projects of the moment, The Granary by Maddux Creative and this gorgeous apartment in Paris by Atelier HA. And if you ever need to bait a catch and release trap for mice, I highly recommend Royal Canin’s Maine Coon biscuits. They work a treat. As we have discovered on occasions too numerous to mention.

A bientôt