The Cats Get a Job

The husband is not happy with the indoor cats' work ethic.

When the cold weather hit, the field mice went scurrying for shelter. Unfortunately, a few chose our house.

Dewey Kitty alerted us to this by sitting by the cabinet under the sink.

The husband opened the cabinet and let Dewey inside. Kitty emerged with mouse in mouth.

What he did next annoyed the husband.

The kitty ran upstairs where he proceeded to play with the mouse for an hour or so.

"I don't know if he killed the mouse or it got away," the husband grumbled.

I had the answer when I found the partially-eaten carcass.

Not one to let his brother have all the glory, Louie Kitty caught a mouse. Considering the boy is declawed and spent his early life in a household where he was expected to cuddle and look cute, that's quite an achievement.

But he didn't eat the mouse right away.

"These cats are no Blotto," the husband said.

Blotto, one of our first cats, was both a hunter and an eater. He could catch and eat a mouse in under a minute; a rabbit took five minutes from catch to devouring.

Blotto, I pointed out, had a mother who spent months teaching him to hunt. And, then he had to contend with Rambles, the Border collie, who liked to steal his mice and rabbits. Blotto learned to eat fast.

"Maybe you can teach the kitties to eat fast," I say.