I hate mice, I guess most of us do. We live in the countryside and there are mice here; a fact of life. They usually don’t get into the house because we have a very good hunter; Tasso the cat.
He might not be the most clever cat in the world, but he is a hard working cat. This is a 6100 sq ft house built in 1886 and it's nooks and crannies are probably an open invitation for a mouse. It’s almost impossible to keep them out, if it wasn’t for our great hunter.
Every day Tasso makes 4-5 patrol rounds through out the house. Even if he is sound at sleep he always goes up and makes his rounds. Every floor, every window, every little cranny . There isn’t a part he doesn’t patrol and there hasn't been one single mouse in the house.
For the moment our opinions differs about the households main enemies. I still regards mice as enemy number one; Tasso don’t.
Not until this year; because we have a problem! For the moment our opinions differs about the households main enemies. I still regards mice as enemy number one; Tasso don’t. For him enemy number one manifests itself as the big red cat that moved in next door.
He still patrols and if you ask him he would tell you that he is exhausted from all his hard work. He sleeps with one eye open and watch the perimeters 24/7. In his opinion the defense line is holding, the big red hasn’t entered the house; the mouse has.
One evening I heard it in the pantry, the cat said; I’m busy, when I pointed out the obvious fact that it was a mouse in the house. A mouse trap and a few hours later, the cheese was gone, so was half a package of almonds – no mouse. The little rascal eat the cheese in the trap, closed it and escaped. The cat was still busy hunting the big red, even though I tried to park him in the pantry.
And so it continued, for three days we fed the mouse cheese through a mousetrap, while watching the level in the almond bag go down. I didn’t want to remove the almonds, who knows where the mouse had gone then, at least now we knew where he was. He liked almonds and didn’t touch anything else.
He was probably over confident, or slowed down by all the almonds he had been eating, but we got him day four. The cat still didn’t bother. Since the big red hadn’t broken any perimeters; he still believed he deserved every possible treat we could give a hard working cat.
