Nellie and the mouse...

Yesterday, a friend sent me a photo of my dear cat, Nellie, taken in one of her habitual locales:

(photo credit: Alice Higginson)

Nellie came to New Brunswick with me in 2009, hiding under the seat of the 26-foot U-Haul truck that my son, Geoff, and I drove from Whitehorse -- nine days on the road.  She was about two years old then, a former stray I had picked up at the local humane society... a bit standoffish like a typical cat, but she had some endearing habits, one of which you see above, another being that she loved to play fetch with sponge balls that she would retrieve expectantly, eager for another throw.

I had originally planned that she would be an indoor cat, but after watching her spend hours gazing out the window, poised as though to jump, tail twitching... always silent, but I could hear her internal keening... I caved, she became an outdoor cat and unwittingly, I laid down the path to her demise.  In October 2010, she went out one day and simply never returned.  Was it a fox that got her, an eagle?  I walked the woods and fields calling for days and days, watching for kill sites, but there was never a trace to be found to let me know what end she met.  Occasionally, for months afterward, I'd catch sight of her out of the corner of my eye, at the edge of the road or emerging from the trees beside the field, but of course it wasn't her, it was my heart's longing for her return.

Fast forward to today.  This morning I was getting ready to go to town for a life drawing session, when an item I needed went flying... search as I might, I couldn't find it, time was running short... oh, the hell with it I thought, I'll look later.  There was a more thorough search when I got home: under the couch, under the piano...  

Here, I must digress for a moment.  For the last few weeks, there has been a lingering unpleasant smell in my kitchen... a dead mouse, I'm sure, and though I've looked everywhere, even pulling out the fridge, stove and dishwasher (my kitchen is now as clean as humanly possible when apparently there's something dead in it), there's been nothing to indicate where the smell could be coming from.  Maybe in a wall somewhere or under a cabinet, though I can find no signs of egress.  The smell is mostly faded now but needless to say, it's been an unsettling business.  Mice don't ruffle me, except when they're dead and rotting somewhere.

So imagine my reaction when I peered beneath the piano and saw in the dimness... a mouse carcass, lying on its side.  Tail, white throat, the dark shape where a mouth would be... but wait, there had been no smell from under the piano... what was I looking at -- a mouse mummy? 

I reached for the yardstick -- really, do yardsticks serve any purpose higher than that of sweeping things out from dark recesses under heavy furniture? --  gave a swipe... and this is what emerged:

Oh, Nellie!  I do miss you...