03-23-02 @ 1:15 am EST

There's a blood trail through our house. It looks like a crime scene.

Cosmas got his first mouse.

Ma said he'd been standing in the utility room intently staring at a spot on the floor and said he might have a mouse cornered. I replied with, "It's probably a bug." He's always cornering stinkbugs. I don't know where on Earth they keep coming from, we never had such a stinkbug problem before, but Cosmas finds them all. And he plays with them. Heaven forbid he should KILL them. WE have to do that for him.

Hence my reply. If he can't kill a lousy stinkbug, how can he kill a mouse?

Well...he didn't QUITE kill it.

I was getting ready to make some stew and spotted him wandering into the hallway with something tiny in his mouth and I jumped back. "Oh my God! He's got a mouse!!"

"Told you," Ma said.

Cosmas stopped and dropped it on the hallway rug. I bent to look at it. It was SO tiny. "Good kitty! GOOD kitty!" I said, and petted him. He kept creeping around it and jumping back from its little corpse...the wuss. "Oh, now that it's dead, he's afraid of it," I said, when the mouse, blood beading on its throat, opened its eyes, rolled over, and stood up.

This time I jumped back. "IT'S STILL ALIVE!!"

Ma started laughing.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am NOT afraid of mice. I have a pet rat, for God's sake, and what is a rat but a really HUGE mouse? I AM, however, afraid of mice that come back from the dead!

It's not so much the fact that it was alive that bothered me, as the fact that it was alive and BADLY hurt. Cosmas promptly batted at it again and its little body went flying across the floor. It didn't get up, but I could tell it was still alive. THE POOR THING! SADISTIC EVIL CAT!! JUST **KILL** IT!! I kept yelling at him to do this while Ma was yelling at me to sweep it into the dustpan and toss it outside. I wanted him to just FINISH what he'd started. Was that TOO much to ask??

"How would this make YOU feel?" I snapped at Ma as I danced around the kitchen, Cosmas batting the mouse around with glee as if it were a new ball. "You're badly wounded and you're dying, and all of a sudden somebody sweeps you up and tosses you out into the snow!"

"Oh, for God's sake. It's going to die anyway. He'll lose it, and then you know what'll happen. You KNOW what that smells like!"

"I WANT HIM TO KILL IT!!"

Well, suffice it to say, Cosmas didn't kill it. Didn't even put it back in his mouth. Just played around with it and finally nudged it under the rug somehow. I kept dancing around and finally went back to Ma and pleaded, "Why don't YOU toss it outside? It wouldn't be so bad if it wouldn't MOVE. I can't stand the thought! If I pick it up to toss it out and it moves, I won't be able to go through with it!"

**sits and ponders how silly she sounds**

"Oh, you BABY!" Ma snorted. She got up. "Get me the broom and the dustpan!"

**and here's Cosmas, batting at the rug**

"Just pick it up by the tail!"

"I'm not touching that thing!!"

"Oh, so who's the baby NOW?"

Ma got the broom and dustpan and came into the dining room, where Cosmas had nudged the mouse under the edge of the rug. "Where is it?"

"It's under the rug." I danced away again. God, I'm such a wuss.

"Under the RUG? Under the RUG??"

"Right there!!"

"YOU hold the cat."

Ma swept up the mouse up into the pan while I held a struggling Cosmas. He REALLY wanted to go along! She came back in and I let him go and for the next ten minutes he walked around crying. "WHERE THE HELL IS MY MOUSE?! I go to all that trouble and you guys just THROW IT OUT?? Next time I'm keeping it to MYSELF!"

Dumb stupid cat. Just as soon as I think he's done something right, he does a half-assed job of it!

I followed a drop of blood I found in the hallway to another drop of blood in the kitchen, to another, and another, leading out to the utility room and under the cabinet. Good GOD, Cosmas!! It's like a crime scene with a trail of blood, honestly! I can track him to where IT occurred!

*Cosmas would not make a good criminal mastermind.

*Cosmas will not make a good mouser unless he cleans up his act. Either BRING THEM BACK ALIVE, or BRING THEM BACK DEAD, not IN BETWEEN! I hardly need to deal with living-dead wounded zombie mice! And THEY ARE NOT TOY BALLS TO PLAY WITH!!

*Cosmas's name is REALLY not suited to him since COSMAS WAS SOMEBODY WHO HEALED PEOPLE, NOT SOMEBODY WHO PUNCTURED THEIR JUGULARS!!

So when all is said and done, I really don't know what to think of this cat. o_o;