This week was a pretty exciting week and not because of some great milestone or a windfall. Nope, i’m talking strictly about the events of the week being exciting.

On Tuesday, I got up for work and went about my normal routine of getting ready at the butt-ass-crack-of-dawn to be at my office by 7:30am. I went into my office to get a sweater . . . cause that’s where I keep my sweaters. Don’t ask.

I turn on the light.

I get my sweater and put it on.

I notice that the cat is pacing in front of the window and that the pillow is on the register. I step forward to remove the pillow, cause-you know, I don’t want to start a fire. Considering that my house is always ridiculously cold, I realize this is an idiotic fear, but decades of indoctrination by my parents about the dangers of “putting things over registers” has done it’s job.

I turn to leave the office but the cat cries out. Percy never makes a noise unless he’s unhappy. Oliver, on the other hand, screams at me on the regular to give him a treat. It only works about 30% of the time.

I ask him what’s wrong . . . like he’s going to answer. Listen, if you don’t talk to you’re pets like they’re real human beings, you might be an inhuman monster. Just saying.

It’s at this point that I notice a large thing on top of the curtain rod. In my head, its a crumpled leaf (because I don’t have my glasses on and can’t see shit) and the question keeps running through my head, how did a leaf get up there?

I take a few steps closer and realize, no-it is not a leaf. It is, in fact, a mouse. That’s when I whisper-shout, “There’s a mouse. Get up! Get up! We have a mouse.”

For a moment, all the fun little cinderella mice, despereaux, and all the other fun loving mice from childrens stories ran through my head and I felt guilty for disturbing it. Then i thought about it’s gross little fingered hands and it running all over my house and mentally said, fuck it.

Ross came in and said, “oohh.” I shit you not.

We come up with a plan. I suggest a bucket and we get to work. Ross came back from the garage with a broom, a bucket, and work gloves. He’d learned his lesson from the last encounter he had with a mouse at work where he wore only surgical gloves. Needless to say, the mouse bit him. There were so many jokes. For a straight week, I called him mouse man and waited for him to transform into a mouse inspired superhero. It never happened to my ever present disappointment.

Here’s where the chase began. Did we shut the office door to make sure the mouse could not get out . . . no. No, we did not. However, that becomes an irrelevant fact.

Ross knocked it off the curtain rod with the broom but didn’t manage to catch it in the bucket. The cat, however, thought this was great fun. He chased that damned mouse all over the office and we followed the cat. At some point, Scarlett woke up and came into the office.

“What are you guys doing?” she asked.

I hesitated a moment because I didn’t want to scare her about the mouse. Ross didn’t seem to care and said, “There’s a mouse in mommy’s office.”

My daughter proceded to plop her butt on the loveseat in my office and cheer on the cat.

We chased him into the closet, then behind the file cabinet, then behind the router. And by “we”, i mean the cat. We just followed the cat. It was behing the router, cornered between the wall, the router, and the cat that ross finally got the bucket over him. He slipped a cookie sheet under the bucket and carried the mouse outside into the front yard . . . in his boxer briefs. LOL.

Be free little mouse but beware, the next time-I’ll let the cat have you. I imagine that to be a horrible, painful, and frightening death. Percy’s never caught a mouse before. I imagine quite a bit of torture (aka playing) before death finally comes.