wanted: Pied Piper

I saw the mouse tonight. Once out of the corner of my eye, as it ran behind the stove. I said "yikes," or something to that effect and scared the kid. Rats. Maybe not the best choice of words...

After my daughter was tucked in I saw it again, darting across the nook off the kitchen, in that confused, scared, vermin sort of circular dash, and then behind the living room couch, I think. I got a really good look at it this time. This whole situation is grossing me out and pissing me off and all I can hear in my head is DeNiro as Capone, "I want him dead, I want his family dead..."
Yeah, I know, that's terrible to think, let alone type, right? Well, imagine finding mouse poop in the bottom of your toaster after you made your kid an English muffin. Try falling asleep at night imagining this little creature in your bedroom, in your child's bedroom, sniffing around for food, maybe setting up camp in her dollhouse. And what if he has friends? Shudder.

Last week I had the building come up again to look for the entry and they finally found it, after pulling out the kitchen cabinets next to the stove. I lived in a fool's paradise for a few days thinking maybe we actually had solved the problem without anybody getting hurt. So they didn't find all the holes or they sealed him in with us. Either way, this has got to end soon, and I'm afraid it won't be pretty.

Years ago, when I lived in Brooklyn and I had just moved upstairs in the building to a nicer apartment, I had a dream on one of my first nights in the place that my cat, Baby, had brought a mouse to me and was rubbing it against my cheek. It was soft. When I got up that morning there was a dead mouse in the middle of the kitchen floor. Gulp. I never saw another mouse in the house after that.
A few years after that, when I was living in Manhattan with M we had a recurring mouse situation, which he tried to solve with steel wool around the sink, etc. One night I felt myself being shaken awake by M. I was lying on my back, spread eagle, and there was my cat Henry, playing with a mouse on top of the covers between my legs. Yikes. We saw him playing with another mouse on a chair another night. After that, no mouse problem.

Unfortunately, Baby is long gone and Henry is now too old to probably help with this situation. He has lived in "the country" for the past year at my cousin's because the kid and I needed to remove all of our allergy triggers. I've been told that not all cats are mousers, so it might not help to even get a "loaner" when all that might accomplish would be runny and itchy eyes and congestion. And still, the mouse. Hopefully, mouse singular. And even more hopefully, not our uninvited guest for much longer.

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