Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"device /dev/brain is missing or corrupted. Please run a manual fsck on device /dev/brain." -- David Kramer

Another lost day -- had things to do, including a fresh try at arranging a ride to Bowie, but my body decided not to cooperate. But that's not what I sat down to write about.

I just got up from the blue bedroom, where I'd been surfing where I could lie down. As I walked past the green bedroom, I saw a mousie on the bed. It looked almost exactly like Perrine's favourite type of toy, except that it was less chewed-up looking, the eyes looked more realistic, and after a couple of seconds the tail twitched. Unfortunately my reaching for the camera that was also on the bed distracted Perrine who was about a foot away, and the mouse made it all the way off the bed (after three tries). Perrine vanished a moment later into the pile of stuff on the side of the room near the closet -- #blink# no more mouse, then *poof* no more cat. So I went downstairs to get a flash to put on the camera. I figure there's at least an 80% chance the mouse will reappear when Perrine does, sometime in the next ten or fifteen minutes.

I wonder whether she'll kill this one.

I also wonder where she got it. Did she find it in the bedroom (yes, mice are occasionally audible in that bedroom and she caught one there before) or did she find it in the kitchen and carry it upstairs to play with it on the bed?

While it's not too late to do anything tonight, I'm in bad enough shape that I'm going to just give up and hope I can accomplish everything I need to do tomorrow. I have a very small quantity of drugs, but am afraid to use them up because I have no idea when I'll be able to get more -- so I'm surrendering to the migraine and hoping I can sleep it off or something. And hoping that my elbow doesn't hurt so badly that I need the Vicodin for my performances over the weekend. Wish me luck.

And wish my adorable killing machine luck too. Yay for a reduced mousie population.

A few minutes after CSI ended, Perrine came running into the bedroom and dropped a mouse on my bed. I'm not sure whether it was the same one as a couple of hours ago or not (I'm guessing not, unless there's a really convenient through-floors-and-walls route from bedroom to kitchen), but it was certainly in worse shape. Coat not laying flat, ears and tail looking not-very-alert. Perrine dropped the mouse on the bed, looked kind of smug, and waited for it to move. When it did, it darted under the blanket toward my thigh, confusing my darling cat. Anyhow, it escaped off the foot of the bed but was quickly recaptured and played with for another minute or two before its heart just gave out. (That is, Perrine never delivered a killing wound, she just played with it until her toy broke.) Then she resumed the "I'm not looking" pose to trick it into moving again, which of course it could no longer do, but she was happy to bat at it when I changed position and moved the sheet slightly. She has absolutely no interest in "Pounce" treats at the moment, being much to interested in the hunting thing to notice a reward (but I do want to reward her). I didn't much care for leaving a dead mouse sitting in the middle of my bed and waiting for her to do things that might cause it to start leaking blood and other fluids, so I tried to swap a toy for it. The toy was interesting until it came to rest, but couldn't compete with the dead mouse (which she'd then started batting around as if it were a toy instead of waiting for it to move). Still, I did distract her with the toy long enough to remove the mouse corpse to throw away (I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have gotten around to eating it ... though someday when my bed isn't the playground I should wait long enough to find out). So now she's looking around, either to see where it went or to find another one, I'm not sure which.

I did stroke her and coo at her and tell her what a good girl she is, but she wasn't paying much attention to anything that wasn't a mouse, so I don't think my praise got through to her any more than the presence of the treats did.

I don't know what the magic is about the Pounce brand of treats in particular that makes them seem like kitty-crack to most cats (all that I can remember seeing react to them), but I'm really impressed that the dead mouse was that much more interesting than Pounce.