"Where's your mouse?"

I'm blessed to live with two cats. One is a young orange tomcat who started life in a feral cat colony. He was rescued and ended up with a foster mom affiliated with the local humane society. Found him on the Internet one day and said, "He's handsome!"

At first, I had difficulty getting used to him. He was rambunctious and rough on my missus, an older Abyssinian female. Although not vicious, he was and is a bundle of energy who enjoys chasing girls. Eventually, we came to accept each other and I think part of Freya started enjoying being chased. He keeps her active and she is in so many ways very lively for a lady cat of twelve years. She doesn't take naps all day like other cats and spends as much time as she can with me at work in the office. She is a little jumpy though, but they've reached a kind of detente.

Wilson's been with us now for three years. I've found that cats and dogs give and understand love, haters and contrarians be damned. The tone of voice I use is understood very easily by them. So when I start ranting about some grave injustice committed against me, they will give me a look of some concern or trepidation. They've had a way of helping me to soften in so many ways.

You can vocalize so many things to a cat and the cat will listen, not judge. They are receptive to conversation and a big part of my day is looking into their eyes and telling them how wonderful they are or how things are going around the place. They just absorb it all and bask in the attention.

Yesterday or so, I asked Wilson where all his mice went. He is extremely timid from having started out life as a little kitten making his way on the streets in a rough gang. Still freaks out every time a delivery person drops off a package (usually cat food, litter, or something pertaining to their well being). Anyway, this evening he brought me his toy mouse, one of many, mission accomplished.

The mice have been missing for weeks. He plays a game where they "run" off under the couch and his job as the big tomcat, is to find them and bring them to justice. He will spend quite a bit of time retrieving them from the dark lairs posing as furniture, laying on the floor like an auto mechanic trying to reach somewhere underneath the chassis of a car to fish out an object picked up from the road. Of course, the mouse eventually gets pushed so far under that he can no longer reach it. This results in me lifting the couch and scooping various toys and placing them on a shelf. We repeat the cycle – a mouse goes out and eventually disappears after a struggle session with the golden boy.

So this evening has been spent playing fetch and catch. The latter his him sitting patiently at the end of the couch waiting to grab the mouse as it tries to fly past him. I often praise him on his shortstop-like reflexes, especially when he does a one armed grab of a low, fast zinger.

I've been remiss in moving the couch to fetch the toys, hence the weeks where I didn't see him playing with a mouse. Fortunately, he has easy access to my sock drawer, which is just a single shelf from an old dresser I burned in the yard one day. It was a piece of junk, an eyesore that just became a dumping ground for old clothes. The clothes I dropped off at a Good Will.

The socks are piled up in it and it sits on the floor next to my bed, an enticing place for a tom cat to take naps in. But the socks are also mice, nay, demons even that need to be kept in check. So when I get back from a trip to the grocery store, there will be my demon-socks scattered throughout the house. It's rare that I ever see Wilson carrying a pair of the socks clamped in his jaws, but he leaves their slain bodies out so that I know he's been protecting us while I'm busy with errands.

Wilson is resourceful, so even when I get behind on the mice, he is able to make do. Tonight, him bringing me an actual toy mouse was impressive. I'd like to think that he and I can communicate, but it seems more a case of coincidence.

It would be too crazy to think that he found a missing mouse because I asked about the day before in a conversation.