Zubby is a rodent killing machine, there's no two ways about it. Every evening while the weather is good we can count on him appearing at the back door upstairs singing the "I Got Me A Dead Thing Blues" complete with something limp and furry dangling in his mouth. Tuesday night was no exception.

Mostly, the spousal unit and I have the situation down to an art form now. One of us shines the flashlight on the cat and utters mass quantities of praise over his skills as a hunter, the wondrousness of his prey. The clearly pleased cat then drops his dead thing, the door is opened a crack, the top of the mighty hunter's head is scratched, and then he disappears back into the night.

Well, last night the spousal unit got flustered because the new cats Enid and Norma were upstairs and they haven't been properly introduced to Zubby yet. So when the spousal unit opened the door to scratch Zubby on the head, he had one eye on Zub and one on the other cats. Somehow Zubby muscled the door open and in he came. With His Dead Thing.

There was a flurry of activity. The spousal unit grabbed the cat and got him out the door. I was on the floor about six feet away in the middle of my stretching routine. At that moment I proved that not only is gravity sometimes just a state of mind, but that it is, indeed, quite possible for a middle-aged woman to levitate. I slipped the surly bonds of earth and levitated myself right up on our bed.

"Tell me he didn't drop the dead thing," I begged the spousal unit.

There was a pause. "I don't think he did," was the reply.

Fine.

Not a minute later the cat was again at the back door singing the "I Got Me A Dead Thing Blues" complete with something limp and furry dangling in his mouth. Solemnly, the spousal unit and I shone the flashlight on him and again uttered mass quantities of praise over his skills as a hunter, the wondrousness of his prey. It was a small brown mouse with a white tummy.

I turned to the spousal unit. "Surely he couldn't have caught something this fast. This has to be the same mouse, right? Is it the same colour?" There was a pause.

"It has to be," the spousal unit said.

Let's all take a moment here to savour the skillful phasing of those words. Has the actual identity of the dead thing been confirmed? No, no it has not.

Well, one thing about ignoring gravity is that it can certainly work up a thirst so I decided to walk downstairs and get a drink of water. Part ways down the stairs I noticed a dust bunny in the corner of one step that was extremely impressive, even by my lax housekeeping standards.

Only it wasn't a dust bunny.

IT WAS A GRAY FREAKING MOUSE.

Zubby had indeed dropped his dead thing in the house. Only it wasn't an actual bona fide dead thing, it was a playing dead thing and it had obviously begun a break for freedom.

Remember the way I levitated up off the floor? Nothing compared to how I rocketed up those steps. I sweartogawd that if there had been some sort of timer I would clocked in at Olympic gold sprinting standards.

I stood at the top of the stairs waving my hands and sputtering. The spousal unit walked down, picked up the poor, bitty terrified creature by its tail and carried it outside to freedom. When he came back in, I pointedly remarked that it was a remarkably gray mouse and not one speck like the brown and white mouse that Zubby brought in its place.

There was a pause.

The spousal unit claimed that in the flurry of dealing with Zubby he didn't really have time to notice the colour of the dead thing. Oh puh-LEESE. I'm not buying this for one second because I know for a fact the spousal unit is an extremely observant person. However, since he's sticking to this cockamamie story and I have no concrete evidence of his perfidy, I have to accept it.

Hmph.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 379.21 miles (610.3 kilometers)
Goal for 2003: 500 miles - 804.5 kilometers