A mouse. Reasonably dead, or at least, missing its head. Left outside my bedroom door… as a trophy on display, I do believe.
Roscoe the Cat showed up on my porch two years ago during a summer thunderstorm, to apply for a job as a mouser. I hadn’t been advertising for a mouser, but he looked so pitifully wet and bedraggled that afternoon, that I let him in — you know, just to let him dry off, and have a few sips of half-and-half.
That was two years ago.
Roscoe took his work seriously, and promptly dealt with the mouse problem inside the house, which consisted of one or two adventurous (but ultimately foolhardy) mice who obviously hadn’t heard about Roscoe’s new employment contract.
But Roscoe wasn’t the type of cat to sit around on the couch licking his fur and gloating over past accomplishments. As soon as he’d finished the job inside the house, he set out to rid the entire neighborhood of anything small, fast-moving, and covered with hair. (Or feathers, unfortunately.)
This morning, (after depositing the headless trophy in the circular trophy repository), I shuffled into the kitchen to pour my first cup of coffee, and noticed Roscoe sitting quietly on the window sill in the dining room, staring out at the back yard, and looking thoughtful.
What does Roscoe think about, I wondered, when he’s sitting there… inside my house… a house, into which no mouse — or other furry creature — now dares to venture? Even spiders tremble and hide, when they sense Roscoe’s presence.
I looked around the dining room… the recently vacuumed rug, the polished table, the rigid chairs, the cold metal floor lamp, the pile of sanitized laundry waiting on the counter, neatly folded… and I suddenly realized what a sterile environment my house had become… thanks in part to Roscoe’s faithful dedication to his duties.
No wonder Roscoe waits by the door, meowing to be let out, whenever he’s been inside for more than an hour. There’s nothing going on within my house. (From a cat’s point of view.) All the excitement is outside, in the wild grasses, in the woodpile’s crevices, in the branches of the trees.
There’s a world out there, outside my door, teeming with life-and-death struggles. Danger. Turmoil. Challenges. Exhilaration. Vicious dogs and high-speed automobiles, on the one hand, and on the other, careless chipmunks and overly-confident chickadees.
All that drama, all that commotion and spectacle, banished by the upright walls of my house. I had never before considered the interior of my house to be a relatively lifeless place. (And I suddenly hoped this wasn’t what Roscoe was thinking about, as he sat by the window, looking out with his back turned to the comparative wasteland of my dining room.)
But you know, I really don’t want my life to be exciting. No mice for me, thank you. No vicious dogs, either. Just neatly folded piles of laundry, if you don’t mind.
Roscoe can have all the thrills.