Domesticated Cats and Mice

From time to time, I have blogged about our three cats. They are, after all, a very important part of our family.

Murjan (Arabic name, meaning coral) hails from Jordan, and we adopted him from a friend of a friend when he was six months. We call him our dog cat because he lies on his back and wants his belly rubbed any time I walk through the door. He also licks us like a dog, follows me everywhere, and apparently is about as much of a mouser as a dog, as I shall explain in a bit.

Intrepid came to us as a very young kitten, just weeks old, abandoned too early by his mother, who probably died. He was found, squaling in the grass behind the house of one of the professors who worked for me when I was living in Jordan a half-dozen years ago. He is still a kitten at heart and loves playing with his toys.

Simone we rescued a couple of years ago. She had been a feral cat, living outside our house, and not venturing near us although we fed her. When we moved, she scampered inside the empty house for a look, and I trapped her. The rest is history. It took two years, but she now sleeps with us, wants to be petted, and follows me around much like Murjan does.

All that is prelude to telling the story of this week. For the first time ever, we have had a mouse in the house. Some new food for our cats it seemed to us. Wrong! All three of our cats enjoyed watching the live mouse but preferred playing with the stuffed ones, to which they returned after a few minutes of sitting and watching the live one scamper around the kitchen. As for killing and eating it, that never entered their heads. Food, to them, obviously comes from a can. So, we sighed and called pest control!

Worse, since the mouse appeared, Murjan, all 20 pounds of him, has taken to crawling into our laps, seemingly wanting protection. From the mouse? Now I know the definition of "domestic cat."