Gritty The Bold
We have mice. You can see the little trails in the snow that lead from the old stone wall down the hill up to the foundations. And you can hear them sometimes in the walls. It's annoying because we're human beings, and we want to control everything in our environment. (And more practically, because they get into things...) It's cute because we were weaned on stories like Stuart Little and The Mouse and The Motorcycle. It's cute because it's winter in the mountains and there's a warm quilt on the bed and furnace chugging away in the basement and mice stealing birdfeed and tucking it up in their little nests under the eaves and... well, you get the picture.
We have a black and white cat named Gritty. Kristen's sister Kate, who lives on a farm, found Gritty in the barnyard one day. She'd been kicked out of the litter. Kate fed the kitten, whose eyes were still closed, with a bottle. Not long after we came down for a visit and Kristen fell in love with the little beast and we took it back to Nashua with us. Turns out the premature weaning and the lack of litter mate socialization made Gritty a little crazy. Well, really crazy. She ran really fast around the house and bumped into things. She always wanted to suck on people’s fingers. But we'd made a commitment, and so we kept her. She decided she was a guard cat. She attacked our landlord; jumped from the floor all the way to his back, trying to get at his neck. One time Kate’s husband Jerry was visiting and she attacked him. I had to hold her at bay with a pillow while he escaped the room.
Tonight I heard something under the stove. I got the flashlight and a broom and saw a little mouse -- or mole, I think it might have been a mole. I pulled out the stove a ways and sent Gritty in. She was back there a minute. I heard the click of her claws, a swipe and then she backed out from behind the stove, butt wobbling in terror. The mole was making an angry chittering noise. It poked its nose out from under the stove, saw I was still there, and ducked back in. I chased it around the kitchen for another twenty minutes with a broom and a plastic cup but I never caught the darn thing.
Gritty hid under Sofia's high chair. She's so territorial she will take on a 200-pound stranger with the temerity to come into the house, but she cowers before moles and mice. Part elephant, maybe?
We have mice. You can see the little trails in the snow that lead from the old stone wall down the hill up to the foundations. And you can hear them sometimes in the walls. It's annoying because we're human beings, and we want to control everything in our environment. (And more practically, because they get into things...) It's cute because we were weaned on stories like Stuart Little and The Mouse and The Motorcycle. It's cute because it's winter in the mountains and there's a warm quilt on the bed and furnace chugging away in the basement and mice stealing birdfeed and tucking it up in their little nests under the eaves and... well, you get the picture.
We have a black and white cat named Gritty. Kristen's sister Kate, who lives on a farm, found Gritty in the barnyard one day. She'd been kicked out of the litter. Kate fed the kitten, whose eyes were still closed, with a bottle. Not long after we came down for a visit and Kristen fell in love with the little beast and we took it back to Nashua with us. Turns out the premature weaning and the lack of litter mate socialization made Gritty a little crazy. Well, really crazy. She ran really fast around the house and bumped into things. She always wanted to suck on people’s fingers. But we'd made a commitment, and so we kept her. She decided she was a guard cat. She attacked our landlord; jumped from the floor all the way to his back, trying to get at his neck. One time Kate’s husband Jerry was visiting and she attacked him. I had to hold her at bay with a pillow while he escaped the room.
Tonight I heard something under the stove. I got the flashlight and a broom and saw a little mouse -- or mole, I think it might have been a mole. I pulled out the stove a ways and sent Gritty in. She was back there a minute. I heard the click of her claws, a swipe and then she backed out from behind the stove, butt wobbling in terror. The mole was making an angry chittering noise. It poked its nose out from under the stove, saw I was still there, and ducked back in. I chased it around the kitchen for another twenty minutes with a broom and a plastic cup but I never caught the darn thing.
Gritty hid under Sofia's high chair. She's so territorial she will take on a 200-pound stranger with the temerity to come into the house, but she cowers before moles and mice. Part elephant, maybe?
