More Adventures of Cookie the “Indoor” Cat

Cookie – the star of our story (Photo credit goes to The Girl)

A couple weeks ago I posted about how our cat, Cookie, showed her love for me by bringing a live rat into my house and depositing it on my bed while I was sleeping. If you missed that story, you can check it out here – Who Let the Rat In?

As I mentioned at the end of that post, this was NOT the end of the story. You would think after that incident I would have immediately declared Cookie to once again be an Indoor Only cat. But no – apparently I need more encouragement.

My MIL has decided that weird stuff in this household only happens to me. Awhile ago she had a vehicle that worked quite well for everyone else in the house, except me. Three different times while driving it, it would just randomly shut off. Sometimes it would turn back over easily, but one time I was stuck in the middle of an intersection for 10 minutes before it decided to cooperate and turn back on. Luckily, it was a lazy small town intersection so there was not much traffic. And the A-holes who drove around me waved as they went by and did not bother to stop! So much for small town hospitality! It finally did die for my hubby but up to that point they thought I was making it all up.

But I digress. After the rat incident we (or rather I) continued to find little surprises in our house thanks to Cookie’s outside adventures. Field mice, lizards, frogs. Sometimes they would be alive still, sometimes they were dead but I’m pretty sure those instances were because our Shepard Mix found them and slobbered them to death. (I’ve taken about 3 or 4 rats from her before and there is never a mark on them. Based on the evidence, she shakes and licks them to death. And to her credit, she NEVER brings them in the house!)

One day while working I looked down to find what I thought was a small twig on the ground. I picked it up only to scream and drop it when the damn thing moved in my hand. It was the tail of a lizard. Apparently they can loose their tails and grow them back later. And when they are freshly lost, they still can move! I found the lizard himself tucked up behind my power cord under my desk. A bit scared, but overall okay. I let him go out back to enjoy the sun and regrow his tail.

Our main bathroom in our house sits at the corner of two hallways. High up on one wall they put in a long narrow window which looks into one of the hallways. Kind of weird to have an interior window on a bathroom, but I guess it is to give the room more light as it has no windows to the outside world. One night I got up to get a glass of water and as I walked by I happened to look up and see what I thought was a big worm on the glass. Once I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked closer I realized what I was seeing was a mouse sitting on the top of the window in the bathroom with it’s tail hanging down across the window.

Once again Cookie had brought us a surprise and grown bored of it!

This time the extraction took a bit longer. This mouse found a way to get under the cabinets so we could not easily catch it without tearing out the sinks and cabinets. At one point I crawled up onto the cabinet in the hallway located beneath the window I mentioned. I watched as that mouse jumped from the floor to the sink to the lights over the mirror to the molding on the window and then over to the top of the door. This appeared to be his favorite hang out spot. (And that thing has some HOPS!)

Picture of our little invader in his favorite spot

My master bathroom shower had been torn out and was in the process of being rebuilt – so all 5 of use were sharing the shower in the main bathroom where this mouse decided to take up residence. So began our daily routine. I would get up and bang on the wall and door for a couple minutes before entering. This gave the mouse time to get off the door and under the cabinet. No way I wanted that thing landing on my head as I walked in and I did not want it to escape into other parts of the house.

I would take a super quick shower and then get the hell out of the bathroom making sure to shut the door behind me.

It took us about a week to catch the mouse. We tried the same bucket trap that worked on the rat. This mouse must have been a super genius. I read online that rats are smarter than mice, but this thing did not fall for that trap. Tried sticky traps – no go. It stepped on the edge of one but just chewed around the trap until it got itself loose. We tried the old fashioned traps with peanut butter. No go! So we finally had to resort to poison. I hated to do this but our hands were forced unless I wanted a permanent new resident.

About 3 days into the poison I went through the usual routine of banging on the door and sneaking into my own bathroom. Looking all around to make sure there was no sign of our unwanted guest. I turned on the shower, hung my towel on the rack and stepped in.

At the time we had a shower curtain with pockets. It was quite handy. With 5 people sharing the same shower (and of course we all had our own preferences for shower toiletries) things can get a bit dicey – quite the tripping hazard. This handy dandy curtain took care of that issue.

On this particular day I had just gotten my hair wet and was going to reach for the shampoo when I looked over and realized only a few inches from my face was the mouse, hanging out in one of the pockets. Needless to say, I screamed, jumped out of the shower and flew out of the bathroom butt naked and dripping wet yelling at my husband to get the mouse. Luckily we had no guests that day and the kids were all out of the house. At the time I did not care though – we could have been having a surprise party and I would have gladly been the unwanted and never to be forgotten surprise.

Even this was not the final straw though. A few days later I walked into our room to find our Shepard Mix trying to get her 120 lb body under our bed. As I walked in to see what had her so excited, she made one more lunge and then quickly started scrambling backwards. As she got free and went to run by me, I reached out and grabbed her collar. I realized as I made her sit that her mouth was full of feathers. I made her drop a poor mangled but still living pigeon and held her there while I yelled at the Hubby to come take care of the bird.

Apparently, Cookie had made another venture outside, caught a pigeon and then decided to bring it into the house and start playing with it under my bed. After the bird was disposed of and the dog put outside, I looked under my bed to find Cookie laying there surrounded by feathers. She had the nerve to look offended!

And THAT was the last straw. Cookie is now once again relegated to Indoor Only status. It only took us 2 months (and ME being the one to find all her surprises!) to finally figure this one out!