eek!

As we sat at the table last night enjoying dinner (risotto with a beet-and-pear salad) my beloved Lemon returned via the cat door from her early evening activities. She came quickly over to the table area, wound her away around G.’s chair, and allowed only him to hear a subtle squeak squeak from nearby. It was in that pre-apocalypse moment that he called out, “Lemon’s got a mouse!”

But, dear readers, before we continue let’s take a quick break from our story to review what we know about Lemon: she’s a killer, she will occasionally bring a kill home for our viewing, she will sometimes bring it home still alive – I think she and Pump like to take a little foray into the catch-and-release mentality before fulfilling the soon-to-be-gone-from-this-World appointment of said small animal. I have exactly zero problem with her killing ways; I’m not too cool with the dead and/or teasing in the house situation, but hey, she’s a cat. Back to the story.

Post-exclamation we all scoot quickly away from the table and glance under to see what was what. What was what was this: Lemon had dropped the mouse in order to begin her party-of-death game and mouse decided he wanted exactly zero to do with the Death Cat. And how did mouse avoid the fate of thousands – by scurrying directly up G.’s pants. Oh yes, you read that right – before we could prepare ourselves fully for the hilarity, the young man is up and doing the MousePants dance in the middle of dining room: “I got a mouse in my pants! The mouse is in my pants!” Now, I didn’t have film of said event, and I certainly didn’t have any clock recording data, but I will be honest and say that the elapsed time it took to pass from “mouse in pants” to concern to raucous laughter was surely less than one second. He was still in the midst of the shaky-leg-varmit-in-my-pants jig when the other four of us bypassed concern and fell into laughter. Is that wrong? As Lemon scurried about trying to find her damn mouse (G.’s lucky she didn’t see the mouse go up the sweatpants, because he would have been dancing with two furry things in his pants) I managed to yell the only thing a mature adult yells in this exact situation: get the fuck out the front door. Honestly, I don’t want the mouse paroled from his pants straight back on to the dining room floor. Yep, I’m a quick thinker. Nearly heroic. G. in his moment of distress did manage to hop, bounce, and dance outside with his brother in tow; where, it must be said, he continued the dance until mousy mouse fell to the grass and apparently made haste into the night.

Ah, life at the Round Table.