Killer Cats (Part Two)

Have you ever had a moment when you are convinced you are dreaming even though you are awake? I had such a moment earlier this week.

I was watching a World Cup clash between Argentina and South Korea. Jasper, our big fat lazy black cat, had squeezed his massive bulk into his favourite box and was snoring like a wild lion.

I’ve never understood why cats are fascinated with cardboard and paper. I can entice Jasper onto my lap by putting newspaper across my legs. You can guarantee that he will climb aboard and start clawing the paper as he strives to get comfortable.

He is equally fascinated with boxes and will attempt to climb into any box no matter what size it is. His current favourite is a small box that is barely big enough to contain his big fat arse – here’s a photo of him in it:




And boy does this cat snore. On a couple of occasions, when I have been foolish enough to allow the cat into our bedroom, I have been woken up by the sound of a snoring leviathan. In my dreamy state I have shoved Mrs PM, thinking it was her, only to be punched in the arm, before realising that the noise is in fact emanating from a black lump at the end of the bed.

Anyway, back to the tale.

You now have a nice picture of the scene in my living room. I was alone in the house, watching the football with only my fat cat for company.

It was at this moment when I thought that I had transcended a peculiar plane into a crazy parallel universe.

I saw something in the corner of my eye that made me glimpse away from the screen towards the curtains. I shook my head in disbelief.

A mouse was climbing the up the cloth in full view of Jasper.

I had never seen a mouse climb before and the sight of the little creature hauling its tiny body up my curtain was almost surreal. Within a minute, it was on the window ledge, looking around as if it owned the place and was surveying its kingdom from the summit of its mighty throne.

I watched for almost a minute in total disbelief before deciding that I was going to save the mouse and return it to the wild. Thanks to Sky+ I can pause live TV, so I stopped the game to allow me to rescue the mouse.

I wondered how the creature had managed to get into the house and concluded that one of our cats must have kidnapped it and released it in the lounge. You may remember that this has happened before when Poppy, our other black cat, brought a live mouse into the house, took it upstairs and dropped it onto Mrs PM who was asleep in bed (read about it here – Killer Cats).

The poor creature must have been hiding somewhere waiting for the opportunity to escape from its feline captors, preferably with its life intact.
I sprung into action – and grabbed my camera and took a couple of snaps. Here they are:



The mouse, meanwhile, thought that it could leap through the window and hurl itself into the front garden. Sadly, the glass prevented it from doing so and it spent a couple of fruitless minutes hurling itself at the glass. I learned something else – mice can jump – and mice are stupid.

I was fascinated and watched the antics of the little beast as it explored its options. Eventually, it gave up and I learned something else; mice can get angry.

Having battered its tiny little nose against the glass for a couple of minutes, it howled in frustration. Thankfully, being a small creature, the howl was just a squeak and it continued to make noises, noises that were just loud enough to wake Jasper.

One minute Jasper was snoring, the next he was looking up at the window in the direction of the enraged rodent.

I had to act.

I grabbed Jasper and tried to haul him out of his beloved box. Sadly, he is so fat that he was totally wedged into the box and all I managed to do was lift up the box as well. After a few seconds wrestling with the cat, I managed to extract his bulk and carry him to the kitchen, where I unceremoniously dumped him outside through the cat flap.

He stared at me through the glass and I sensed he was saying:

“You bloody great oaf!! I was having a fabulous dream about food. How do you expect me to look after this house if you won’t let me have my pre-nap snooze? I need as many snoozes as I can during the day so that I have the energy for my main sleep in the evening. You utter git!”

I then had to decide how to catch the mouse – and hatched a plan.

In the kitchen I found a plastic sandwich box that was big enough to accommodate a rodent in ample comfort for the small trip I had planned for it. I would walk into the lounge, put the box over the mouse, slide the lid under the box and then carry the box out to the front door where I would release the mouse back into the wild. This plan had the added bonus that the cat would not be able to reacquire the mouse since we never allowed him out of the front door.

As I approached the lounge, I remembered that we had two cats and I didn’t know where the other one was. I peeped into the lounge and saw the mouse still considering its options on the window ledge. Poppy, our second cat, usually slept upstairs in one of the other two bedrooms, so I locked the mouse in the lounge and searched upstairs for Poppy. She was, as expected, asleep in the back bedroom. I carefully locked her in before returning to the lounge.

The mouse had gone.

“Oh crap!” I thought.

I put the sandwich box on the settee and began to check behind the curtains. There was no sign of the mouse.

Disappointed, I decided to continue watching the game. I picked up the camera and had a quick look at the photos I had taken, chuckling at my efforts, when the mouse reappeared.
This second encounter taught me that mice are very, very fast.

As I was looking at the camera, the mouse, which had now climbed down from the window ledge, shot across the room like a big furry bullet. The little creature ran straight towards me and across my bare feet, causing me to drop the camera and, at the same time, accidentally taking a picture of the ceiling and my shocked expression.

The mouse is responsible for this comedy photo:

I had left the lounge door open and the mouse zipped straight out the door, heading for the back room and the kitchen.

At that point, I heard a massive commotion with the sound of tiny claws scrambling on a wooden floor.

“Crikey,” I thought, “I didn’t think a mouse could make that much noise.”

That’s when it dawned on me. It wasn’t the mouse that made the noise at all.

Jasper had returned and was waiting for the mouse as it escaped from the lounge.

“No!” I screamed as the cat ran towards the back door. I was determined to rescue the mouse so I pursued the cat through the kitchen. Jasper burst through the cat flap and sat outside with the mouse in his mouth. I didn’t realise that my fat cat could be so fast.

Sadly, the back door was locked and the key wasn’t around so all I could do was watch as the cat dropped the mouse and started playing with it. The mouse lay still.

It was over. Here's my murderous moggy with the poor ex-mouse:

I had failed.

My fat killer cat had struck again.

Eventually, bored because the dead mouse wasn’t playing any more, Jasper crept back in and crowbarred his mass into the box for his second pre-nap snooze, oblivious to the trauma caused by my failed attempt to rescue the mouse.

I found the key and carefully picked up the dead mouse by its tail with some kitchen towel. I found a little spot for it in the back garden and buried it, saying a little prayer for the little creature whose life had been cut short so violently by my mad moggy.

As wonderful as cats are, the episode reminded me once more that our two loveable little pets are in fact monstrous killers. One minute a cat can be sitting on your knee, purring and being cute, and the next it can be prowling the undergrowth looking for a creature to kill.

Still, at least the mouse is immortalised on this blog and, thanks to you dear reader, his memory will live on for a while at least - and of course it gives you a chance to see another photo of my ugly mug.

Killer Cats

Cats can be cute and cuddly, but one thing that most people forget (usually women) is that they are in fact vicious killing machines who butcher innocent creatures without remorse.

Take the other night, for example. Picture the scene:

There I was, sitting at my desktop, with a very dodgy post about toilets in front of me, searching for inspiration for another blog post. Mrs PM had gone to bed early. The house was silent. The world was falling asleep.

All of a sudden, a blood-curdling scream reverberated around the house. It shocked me so much that I pressed “Publish” by accident and unleashed the disgusting post about toilet habits onto the world without proof-reading it first. Mayhem ensued.

Poppy, the most timid of our cats, the one who is terrified of shadows, raced downstairs in a flurry of black and threw herself out of the cat flap like a feline possessed. This was all the more incredible because the cat flap was locked.

Spooked by the scream and Poppy’s remarkable exit, our fat cat, Jasper, followed her and somehow managed to crowbar his bulk through the same cat flap.

“What the …?” I said. Mrs PM ran downstairs still in a state of shock.

Fearing that we had a burglar or, worse, a ghost in the house I looked around for the nearest blunt object. I found a Wii controller and prepared myself for combat. Then I thought to myself “That’s going to be a pretty useless weapon when challenging a spook,” so I reluctantly put it down and tried to be the brave man.

“Wh..wh...wh...what’s wrong?” I stammered, picturing a psychotic vampiric spectre marching downstairs with blood lust in its eyes.

“Poppy’s bought a LIVE MOUSE into the bedroom and dropped it on the bed,” said Mrs PM with a look of total trauma. I then realised that she was holding the little blighter by its tail – and it was still wriggling. She opened the front door and carefully released it back into the wild.

When she came back, I was on the floor rolling around in hysterical laughter.

“IT’S NOT FUNNY!” she shouted before storming off back to bed.

I was still laughing when I reread the blog post I had inadvertently published. Thankfully, I deleted the post before anybody read it (at least I hope I did).

I have tried, in vain, to convince Mrs PM that “her babies” can be evil little monsters who terrorize wildlife. Even Poppy, a tiny cute little black creature, can mutate into a vicious, heartless predator. If Arnie Schwartzenegger had had to face a giant Poppy in that jungle rather than an alien killing machine, he wouldn’t have stood a chance.

I’ve seen it myself. Poppy has marched into the lounge on a number of occasions with a live creature in her mouth and then let it go before walking out of the room again, leaving me to catch the creature myself.

I AM NOT A CAT.

I cannot catch mice; I cannot catch birds; I cannot catch frogs.

Have you ever tried to catch a mouse? It’s impossible. Cheese doesn’t work. Those Tom and Jerry cartoons are lies.

Mice are bad enough but birds are the worst.

Why? Because they can fly and I hate them.

When I was a kid, we had a particularly vicious cat called Midge. This cat was a psychopath. It would treat me as prey. I would go to school covered in scratches, battle scars from my confrontations with this mad moggy.

My dad christened the cat Midge because when we first acquired him, he was tiny, absolutely minute and totally cute. But inside that tabby ball of fluff lurked a monster. It seemed like he mutated overnight. One day he was a cuddly little ball of fluff, the next he was a psychotic killing machine – and nothing was safe – including me.

One day, I returned from school and Midge was sitting on the gate post. As I approached, I heard him purring and so, led cunningly into a false sense of security, I put out my hand to stroke him.

I almost lost it. He leapt off the wall, grabbed my hand with his front paws, sank his teeth into my flesh and clawed my forearm with his back legs. I couldn’t shake him off. By the time he’d let go, my entire arm was a bloody mess.

Another time, he jumped on my knee, purring and moved his face close to mine. Before I could say a word, he had sunk his teeth into my nose. On other occasions he simply scratched me for the hell of it. I think he saw me as a challenge. He would stare at me and his eyes would say “You’re going down, sucker!”

My sisters were also victims. He once climbed into my eldest sister’s school bag and peed all over her school books.

As well as attacking me at every opportunity, Midge used to bring live birds into the house and let them go. Once, he brought in a thrush that was almost bigger than he was. He let the beast go and its instinct told it to fly for freedom towards the window. As well as glass, there was another obstacle to block its escape: a net curtain.

The bird flapped around the window screeching in terror and the cat ran up the net curtain tearing it to shreds in the process. I sat there in total shock as I watched the mayhem unfold. I was stunned into inaction as the cat leapt about the window, using the curtains as claw holds, ripping them to pieces.

Can you imagine the scene? Me trying desperately to catch a cat with bloodlust in its eyes, a terrified thrush flapping around making enough noise to wake a corpse, and my mum’s net curtains being systematically destroyed by claw and beak?

It took me a good ten minutes to catch the cat. As I struggled to take it outside, the cat vented its spleen and tore several shreds of skin from my face and arms. Midge became a hissing, scratching ball of pure fury; it was like wrestling a live chainsaw.

Having disposed of the cat, I finally managed to open the window and free the thrush. However, the poor creature had deposited the contents of its bowels evenly over the curtains, carpet, TV and most other items of furniture in the lounge. The bird was like a TARDIS - how could something so small contain so much poo?

I sat down dishevelled, bleeding and shell-shocked. All I could hear was the cat howling outside the door: “Let me in or there will be hell to pay.”

It took a hell of a lot of explaining to my mum when she returned and saw her lounge looking like the Battle of the Somme. And, of course, because to her Midge was a harmless ball of cuteness, I got the blame.

“Yes, Mum. I caught a thrush, let it go in the lounge and tried to cut it to pieces with a chainsaw. Midge had nothing to do with it.”

Thankfully, our three cats are nowhere near as violent as Midge was. Nevertheless, they do feel the need to bring us creatures, alive and dead, for reasons that only they understand. They show no remorse when they drop a bloody half-eaten sparrow in the middle of the carpet. In the summer, in particular, our house can become littered with half-eaten woodland creatures. Our house becomes a morgue for wildlife.

I see dead creatures.

And still Mrs PM treats the cats as if they are little angels.

The day after Poppy dropped a live mouse on Mrs PM in bed, she was walking around the house, cooing.

“Poppy! Poppy! Where are you little girl?”

“She’s probably annihilating the mouse population again,” I replied on Poppy’s behalf.

“She’s not,” replied Mrs PM. “She’s frightened because you’ve been stomping around like a demented elephant again. You’re horrible”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” I said. “But are we talking about the cute little black thing, known in the garden as The Killing Beast? The same little black ball of fluff that decapitates mice for fun? The very same timid creature that dropped a live mouse on your head last night?”

“Leave her alone,” she snapped.

“So let me get this right – you’re having a go at me because Poppy, aka the Manchester Mouse Murderer, is out there on a killing spree rather then being here with you?”

“She’s not a murderer. She’s lovely. She’s so cute.” said Mrs PM before storming off. I somehow managed to acquire the blame for the whole episode.

I can’t win. It is so difficult to convince Mrs PM, sometime, that Poppy is really a serial killer; so is Jasper; so is Spike.

Anyway, I need to get this off my chest, so I would like to dedicate this post to Poppy for giving me a little inspiration.

Now then, where’s that post about toilet habits?