All this time I suspected Duncan was a bit lazy, but it turns out he just had nothing to do. That’s why he slept twenty hours a day.
But it turns out he’s actually a workaholic. The last few days he has been working round the clock.
On Sunday he chased a mouse behind a bookcase. Then he stared at that bookcase for a day and a half.
GC was impressed.
“If I ever need anything watched, I’m hiring Duncan,” he said.
Then, yesterday afternoon, I was sitting on the couch when Duncan abandoned his post at the bookcase and came over to the couch. He started making chattering noises. I joined him on the floor, and peered under the couch with him. Sure enough, the mouse was there.
I lost interest after a minute or two, but Duncan stayed there for hours, watching.
After dinner he switched his attention to the closet, where he finally managed to flush out the mouse.
He trapped it in the rolling mechanism of the lawn mower. (You might be wondering why I have a lawn mower in my living room. I bought it yesterday, assembled it, and mowed the lawn, but there were some wobbly bits which GC was going to tighten up for me.) Anyway, Duncan kept poking his paw between the blades to touch the mouse, and I was worried that either Duncan or the mouse might cut themselves. So GC moved the lawnmower and that’s when the mouse made a break for it and hid in GC’s shoe. Duncan wasn’t sure where the mouse had gone, but he found him again when he emerged from the shoe.
With the cat in hot pursuit, the mouse ran towards the couch and scrambled over my foot. I squealed like a little girl, even though I’m not actually afraid of mice.
GC and I went to the community garden to build our square foot gardening box. (It’s so beautiful.)
When we got back, Duncan was strategically positioned between the hall closet and the couch.
For the third night in a row, he didn’t come to bed with us. Each night he has woken me up at some point during the night for a quick visit with lots of meowing and some compressed affection, and then he has returned to his hunting duties.
Last night, at 3:00 am, he finally curled up and went to sleep with me. This made me very happy, because I missed sleeping with him, and also because I was worried about the long term effects of sleep deprivation on him. Today he’s sleeping on the back of the couch, which is his usual daytime sleeping spot.
I don’t know where the mouse is, but if I were him I’d be in the basement packing my things.
perhaps Duncan and the mouse were negotiating a coexistence agreement.
The furpeople here seem to be mostly getting along better. They each seem to have adopted one of us as their designated human for the most part although the younger one does like to ‘assist’ with the cleaning out of their potty.
I knew it!
Copy of my Jan 11th blog response on Duncan’s stalking habits: “He needs to actually SEE the mousie tap dancing across the floor in front of him and then (and only then) will he take the job. The good news is that as soon as this happens, he becomes a very persistent and diligent stalking kitty until he gets his mouse.”
Duncan the Glorious Dogcat is in the house…mousies BEWARE!
Hmmm – this makes me think I might need to get a pack of mice to help exercise Tux!
The one and only time we’ve ever witnessed Eri, our Dogcat, do anything aside from be a totally sweet, dim housecat was the time we had a bird come down the chimney. Mum struggled to get it out of the house (the damned thing wouldn’t go for the door, instead would smash into the really really dirty ancient windows repeatedly!) with Erik’s help. He appeared to climb air and nothing could deter him in the slightest from his prey. At that moment we finally understood how he survived as a stray in mid-winter. We haven’t had any more birds come down the chimney, so he’s gone back to his lazy dogcat self!
Reb, I think they just had a time-out.
Mo – that’s amazing. You couldn’t have been more right!
Valerie, I’m sure Duncan lost another pound this week, though I haven’t weighed him yet.
Arden, I know what you mean – when their instincts kick in like that, you don’t even recognize them anymore.