He's welcome in her room anytime, she says

This afternoon I was in the kitchen finishing up a sinkful of dishes. Audrey came in to me giggling and said, "Linus is being really funny right now. He's playing with one of his toy mouses."

"Oh, I bet he's having fun with it."

"Yeah, he really is! He's making funny noises with it!"

And suddenly I heard Linus growling. Linus almost never growls. He's so laid back, he makes a sloth look hyper. But he was growling. And at first I thought it was Lucy, who does growl quite often, usually when Linus is harassing her. But it was not her and Linus was nowhere near her.

"Where IS Linus, Audrey?"

"He's in my room, Mommy, playing with the toy mouse. Hear him making that noise?"

I looked in Audrey's room, and there indeed was Linus with a bit of gray fur hanging out of his mouth, a long tail dragging on the floor.

My first thought was, huh...I don't remember seeing a GRAY toy mouse in here before, I thought all of the toy mice were white.

My second thought was, long TAIL?? Linus' mice don't have tails that long. Heck, they don't have tails at all, he pulls them out as soon as we give them to him.

"LEO!!!!!!!!!!!! Linus has a MOUSE!!!! A. REAL. ONE!"

Thank goodness it was a rare afternoon that Leo was home. We tried to figure out what to do as Linus continued growling at the mouse, which was still alive. He would drop it, chase it, grab it, get it in his mouth again. Neither cat has claws in front, so I was afraid it might actually get away if he kept playing with it. My other fear was that he WOULD kill it and get blood on Audrey's carpet (because that would totally freak her out).

I told Leo I didn't want him to kill it. I know, I know, completely irrational. If we let it go, it might just come back in the house. But for me, it's one thing to set a trap to catch a mouse that is sneaking around your house; it's something totally different to see a living, squirming, cute little gray mouse hanging out of your cats jaws.

(And people, you also have to know that mice do not freak me out. I mean, their presence loose in one's house is not a good thing, and I would not want to be charged with catching a live one on my own, but my point is, when I was living in China, I had RATS. They were terrible in Suzhou. All over the campus, including in the stairwells in the classroom buildings which have no lights at night, but more importantly, in my apartment. They were like small dogs. So when my teammate and I got rid of the rats, and then months later I saw a mouse in the same apartment, I was startled, but then I thought, oh, it's so cute and tiny, like a cricket. After a year of rats, mice were nothing.)

First Leo just kept telling us to go away and let him take care of it. But I KNEW he was going to kill it. I told him to catch it, put it in a bowl or something, put it in my van, and I would take care of it when I went out later. He nixed that idea, not crazy about the possibility of a mouse running loose in the new van. Leather seats, you know. Finally, he promised he would not kill it, but he would not tell me what he DID plan to do with it. He put a bowl over it, slid a plastic sack around the bowl, and carried it outside.

What he did (and finally told me when I pouted, a new trick I've picked up from Jessica Simpson) will mean nothing to you if you are not familiar with a little series of children's stories about Christopher Churchmouse. But if you have read the story about the Rainy Day, in which Christopher and his cousin are warned not to play in the sewer, but do indeed play in the sewer and run into a gang of sewer rats...you will figure out what Leo did with our little gray mouse.

It was raining hard most of the day. I hope that little mouse can swim.