Mickey and Minnie, I'm not a fan. Please go away.

I'm taking a break from work to vent about a little problem I'm having. Also, I've shirked my blogging so it's time to get back to business. Lunch break well spent.

Backing up to a couple of weeks before Christmas, I found the innards of small creature on my living room throw rug. Hmmpf, nice. Critter innards. Lovely. I assumed that our slasher cat, Jagger, brought in his little prize from outdoors and proceeded to eat in on my living room rug. Why do cats insist on doing this? But I digress. That happened on a Friday, I think. So Sunday morning I shuffle down to the kitchen to get the coffee started and there awaits, in the middle of the floor, half a mouse. Half. *cue the eye roll and disgust*

So now I'm wondering how Jags is able to fool us humans by bringing in his little treasures. How do we keep missing this...unless...oh no. No, no, no...we do not have mice. Not. an. option.

Move forward to Christmas morning. The obliteration of presents is over. Coffee has been consumed. It's time to shower and get on the road to visit with family. As I'm cruising through the kitchen, a little movement catches my eye, under the baker's rack. Whoa, what was that? I stop, spin and stare. Sure as shit, a little gray mouse is popping his little head through the white cold-air return vent under the baker's rack. Holy shit! Of course, like any middle aged suburban wife, I screamed like an idiot for my husband, as if he could magically stretch his arm across the room (picture Stretch Armstrong), grab hold of the little rodent, plop his little ass out of the vent, and proceed to remove him to the great outdoors. No, oh no, removal of said mouse requires blueprints, options, consultants, traps and beer. (for me)

See, the thing is, we're leaving for the day. The following day we have a gabillion things to do. Then the next morning we're leaving for a 7 day vacation. How do we fit in mouse removal? Dilemmas, dilemmas.

Apparently our little friends have hit the motherlode, leisurely helping themselves to the cat food that is stationed close by. Ballsy, if you ask me. I mean, Slasher Cat already took one of them out, you'd think that would have been a lesson to them, but noooooo. They're going to push their luck. I guess the lure of free cat food has more appeal than life. Again, ballsy little fuckers.

So I tell DaHubs to cover the vent and I move the cat food to another part of the kitchen. But instead, we decide on covering the majority of the vent, leaving a small little escape, leave the catfood close by, and buy a "humane trap." Only, we forget to tell our neighbor that's what we do. She's going to be taking care of our cats while we're away, and is aware of our mouse problem. Because we were in a hurry to leave, we forgot to mention that we left a trap. She walks in and sees that we covered the vent, assuming the entire vent is covered. She doesn't see the trap.

So to stop this Tolstoy novel, I'll move to the quick. We get home to a faint foul odor in our kitchen. The trap has moved several feet from where we left it. The humane trap has mouse poop in it, but no mouse. The neighbor said about 2 days after we left, there was a terrible odor in our kitchen. She assumes that the mouse is stuck in the closed vent, expired and rotting. So did the mouse escape his humane trap? Did Jags fish him out and kill him? WHERE THE HELL IS THIS MOUSE?

I still don't know if he's dead. I'm not happy in my kitchen. I'm fixated on the corner of my kitchen that has the vent. I'm a little creeped out.

And to add salt to my wound, for the second time in the last 6 months here at the office, we have a mouse. Last time the little bastard shit in my coffee cup. Now he's running amok helping himself to stashed peanut butter crackers and oatmeal packets.

Will this mouse madness ever end?