Finally earning his keep

Haru (who isn’t my cat so much as he’s just a cat who happens to live in my house; we’re mutually coming to terms with this) finally served a useful function yesterday, besides just purring and being cute.

I was out in the garage cleaning out the car tis afternoon. It’s needed it for a while. I’d laid out a couple of the car mats to be vacuumed when I caught just out of the corner of my eye a little black thing moving along the door frame. I thought it might be a shadow cast from a plane or something, but its movement had a distinct scurrying quality to it.

I briefly contemplated setting out traps or something. But then I had a better (tho possibly crueler) idea.

Haru’s always trying to get out in the garage. I figured it was probably because it’s different and smelly and he can get a different view looking out of the garage window. He likes stuff like that. I hadn’t considered that maybe he was hearing scurrying noises.

So I let him out.

About an hour later, I went out to check on him. As soon as I opened the door I heard a squeaky squealing noise. Already I felt kinda bad for the mouse.

Haru picked him up in his mouth, trotted over to me and ceremoniously dumped him on his back in front of me. He seemed pretty proud of himself. Before I could trap the little, black mouse in a kitty litter pail, though, it managed to flip itself over and scurry into a corner.

Haru and I chased it around for a bit. He was really just playing with it, like he’d play with his stuffed mice I get him from the Faire. I was trying to trap it, so I could maybe drive it out to the UW Nature Preserve or somewhere. That wasn’t working so well.

The mouse eventually managed to find his way back under the garage door, which is presumably where he came from. Getting Haru back in the house after that took a while, but he got bored eventually (after leaving paw prints all over my car, of course). I’ve let him out a few times since and it doesn’t look as if the mouse has come back.