strange bedfellow (+ catposting)
Feb. 12th, 2024 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ratbonesOn Saturday, I was awoken at 4 AM by something tickling my neck. I swatted at it, mostly asleep, and heard a soft plop on my pillow.
That woke me up. What the heck was that? Had I knocked a beetle onto my pillow? It's not exactly prime beetle season. Stink bug? I know I don't have roaches. I turned a light on and pulled my covers back, picked up the pillow and flipped it over. Nothing.
As long as the bug or whatever was gone, I thought I might as well go back to sleep. It occurred to me that I might have hallucinated the sound or the whole event; I do hallucinate on the edge of sleep, sometimes hearing a voice or being awoken by a loud bang that evidence suggests did not actually happen. It occurred to me to imagine the tickle had been a house centipede, not because that fits the facts at all, but because they're the scariest animal I have seen in my house.
It took me awhile to fall asleep in between twitchily rubbing my neck, but I did.
Two hours later, I registered through sleep a warning sound of tiny feet skittering across my pillow, and then they were skittering across my neck and onto my face. This time, my arm was on alert. It woke up faster than the rest of me and threw the offender clear across my bedroom, where I heard it thump to the floor.
What the fuck, my brain thought as it caught up, and then, mouse. Definitely mouse. I turned a light on in time to catch sight of the furry little culprit scampering across the floor. I'm not gonna lie, it was cute. This did not give me the feelings that a centipede would have. I even felt a little bad for yeeting it like that. But, like. It had walked across my head. Twice.
This has never happened to me. I'm not sure if I need to say that. Mice do end up in my house through the colder seasons, largely in the highly-permeable basement, but I don't see them in the living space much. There's nothing for them to eat in the kitchen, let alone in my bedroom. I never snack in bed. I don't purport a perfectly pristine or ascetic lifestyle, but I don't drop trash or laundry on the floor, either, and I've never found mousy leavings in my bedroom, which is not on the ground floor.
Also, I have cats. I haven't introduced them on here yet. Zeus is a gregarious, easygoing ten-year-old who I acquired fourth- or fifth-hand when he got his leg shot off, and I bet you didn't think that sentence was going to end that way. (I happened to be petsitting for his owners at the time, so I saw him through emergency surgery, and then ended up adopting him after that because I had better accommodations for a newly three-legged cat.) Pablo is a kittenish three-year-old who came to me via my mom's humane possum trap, because he is exactly the type of knucklehead to fall for possum bait. The two of them are almost identical except for the missing leg and the fact that Pablo is about half Zeus's size.
This is Zeus. He's a busy guy. It's hard to take pictures of him except when he's asleep. Code name: Juice.
This is Pablo. He's mastered the 🥺 face. Code name: Peachy.
You can tell they get along well...and are well-fed.
So you'd think these two would deter any mice that did decide to crawl into my bed, but in fact, I think this adventure was probably Pablo's fault. The day before, I had seen Pablo searching frantically around my office, next to the bedroom. I thought at the time that he must have caught a live mouse and brought it where I was working, then dropped it and lost it behind the furniture. I've seen this happen before; my late beloved Cora (queen of my heart) did it multiple times, although she rarely lost a mouse for good. So I didn't think much of it. I expected Pablo would also eventually catch it, or else if it escaped him, it sure wouldn't stick around.
Back to my bedroom at 6 AM: that's also what I expected to happen to the mouse after I yeeted it. Not in my bed, not my problem! Phew. I opened the bedroom door so the gingers could come deal with the situation, i.e. do their one and only job in life besides looking cute, and I went back to sleep.
When I finally woke up semi-rested at a suitably late hour, having not been walked on again, I thought, well, that's a funny story. I should write that one up. Then I read a book for a while, and then I got up and threw back the duvet and a mouse flew across the room. Again.
I guess it was cold.
(Coda: when I got home on Saturday evening, there was a mouse corpse awaiting me on the doormat. The gingers did their job! Eventually.)
That woke me up. What the heck was that? Had I knocked a beetle onto my pillow? It's not exactly prime beetle season. Stink bug? I know I don't have roaches. I turned a light on and pulled my covers back, picked up the pillow and flipped it over. Nothing.
As long as the bug or whatever was gone, I thought I might as well go back to sleep. It occurred to me that I might have hallucinated the sound or the whole event; I do hallucinate on the edge of sleep, sometimes hearing a voice or being awoken by a loud bang that evidence suggests did not actually happen. It occurred to me to imagine the tickle had been a house centipede, not because that fits the facts at all, but because they're the scariest animal I have seen in my house.
It took me awhile to fall asleep in between twitchily rubbing my neck, but I did.
Two hours later, I registered through sleep a warning sound of tiny feet skittering across my pillow, and then they were skittering across my neck and onto my face. This time, my arm was on alert. It woke up faster than the rest of me and threw the offender clear across my bedroom, where I heard it thump to the floor.
What the fuck, my brain thought as it caught up, and then, mouse. Definitely mouse. I turned a light on in time to catch sight of the furry little culprit scampering across the floor. I'm not gonna lie, it was cute. This did not give me the feelings that a centipede would have. I even felt a little bad for yeeting it like that. But, like. It had walked across my head. Twice.
This has never happened to me. I'm not sure if I need to say that. Mice do end up in my house through the colder seasons, largely in the highly-permeable basement, but I don't see them in the living space much. There's nothing for them to eat in the kitchen, let alone in my bedroom. I never snack in bed. I don't purport a perfectly pristine or ascetic lifestyle, but I don't drop trash or laundry on the floor, either, and I've never found mousy leavings in my bedroom, which is not on the ground floor.
Also, I have cats. I haven't introduced them on here yet. Zeus is a gregarious, easygoing ten-year-old who I acquired fourth- or fifth-hand when he got his leg shot off, and I bet you didn't think that sentence was going to end that way. (I happened to be petsitting for his owners at the time, so I saw him through emergency surgery, and then ended up adopting him after that because I had better accommodations for a newly three-legged cat.) Pablo is a kittenish three-year-old who came to me via my mom's humane possum trap, because he is exactly the type of knucklehead to fall for possum bait. The two of them are almost identical except for the missing leg and the fact that Pablo is about half Zeus's size.
This is Zeus. He's a busy guy. It's hard to take pictures of him except when he's asleep. Code name: Juice.
This is Pablo. He's mastered the 🥺 face. Code name: Peachy.
You can tell they get along well...and are well-fed.
So you'd think these two would deter any mice that did decide to crawl into my bed, but in fact, I think this adventure was probably Pablo's fault. The day before, I had seen Pablo searching frantically around my office, next to the bedroom. I thought at the time that he must have caught a live mouse and brought it where I was working, then dropped it and lost it behind the furniture. I've seen this happen before; my late beloved Cora (queen of my heart) did it multiple times, although she rarely lost a mouse for good. So I didn't think much of it. I expected Pablo would also eventually catch it, or else if it escaped him, it sure wouldn't stick around.
Back to my bedroom at 6 AM: that's also what I expected to happen to the mouse after I yeeted it. Not in my bed, not my problem! Phew. I opened the bedroom door so the gingers could come deal with the situation, i.e. do their one and only job in life besides looking cute, and I went back to sleep.
When I finally woke up semi-rested at a suitably late hour, having not been walked on again, I thought, well, that's a funny story. I should write that one up. Then I read a book for a while, and then I got up and threw back the duvet and a mouse flew across the room. Again.
I guess it was cold.
(Coda: when I got home on Saturday evening, there was a mouse corpse awaiting me on the doormat. The gingers did their job! Eventually.)
no subject
Date: 2024-02-16 01:16 am (UTC)I'm sure Zeus, at least, would be VERY happy if you could pet him through the screen. :D