Bonnie has been watching a cupboard in the kitchen for days.   I thought she
was having some of her 'connecting to the mothership' days until I saw the
mouse dropppings in the cupboard.   I hate mice coming in for the winter,
they have to be got rid of somehow and I have a hatred of killing anything.
I can't buy humane mousetraps so sometimes manage to get the mouse to run
into a box of newspaper with cheese in the bottom.    Members of the
newsgroup may remember the terrible year a mouse got trapped in the toaster
and got incinerated when I turned it on.   That was awful as I didn't
realise there had been a mouse in the toaster for a few days and we kept
eating incinerated mouse toast!!!

This morning Bonnie was sitting on the servery looking at my drawer full of
cookery books and recipes on sheets of paper.   I dragged out the drawer,
terrified a mouse would jump out and run up my jumper.  Got it on the lawn
(it was raining slightly) and began emptying it out.   I let Fluffy out of
the cat house half way through but B & C stayed inside staring myopically at
the space where the drawer had been.

Suddenly I struck oil.    A mouse tore out with Fluffy in hot pursuit.
She's hopeless, of course, and it soon gave her the slip.    B & C heard the
noise from the kitchen and screamed outside to join in the fray.   Too late
I told them,lifting up the drawer.   Then it happened, another mouse was
hiding in a roll of glad wrap.   It raced across the  lawn with Bonnie in
hot pursuit of her prize.   She caught it (Bonnie is smarter than Fluffy)
and then, ye gods, tried to get it back in the kitchen to play with.     I
managed to shut the door on her just in time.   Bonnie knows all prey are
better inside as they can't get away!!

The position now is that all the cats are on the back lawn in the rain,
chasing two mice!!!!   Meanwhile, back in the jungle I am wondering if there
are more members of the mouse family inside other drawers, yikes - it's
going to be a long day as I launch into a belated 'winter-clean' of the
kitchen cupboards and try to block up any suspected holes where the little
fiends can get in.

And the cats are going to love it.

Bev