Rodents

I asked the internet to lend me a cat to kill the mice that have invaded my house, but it turns out that people don’t want to lend out their cats. I had two cats who loved to commit murder but I don’t have custody of them anymore and everyone I ask tells me that it would be inappropriate to ask to borrow them. I’m not sure if they ever killed a mouse but they did catch worms and insects and a bird, once, and I would love to see them again but maybe I wouldn’t want to give them back. That is the trouble with letting go of things, I suppose. That they don’t belong to you anymore.

I got a lot of advice about the mice. May I say, unsolicited advice, since I had only asked if somebody would lend me their cat. Stuff all the holes in your house with wire wool, the internet said, use humane traps, use snap traps, use peanut butter, sprinkle cayenne pepper around the edges of the rooms, get the sort of poison that makes the mice thirsty so that they leave the house looking for water and then die somewhere you won’t have to smell them, peppermint oil, pay for an exterminator, leave home, bleach, bleach, bleach.

We set traps, both ‘humane’ and not. I put peanut butter in them, and, for luck, ferrero rocher, because I think if I was a mouse that I would LOVE to eat a ferrero rocher. They were not moved by my vision. I was prepared to put poison down but a person on the internet told me that their cat died after eating a poisoned mouse and then they sent me a photograph(!) of a dying owl and the caption was ‘All I wanted was a mouse for dinner.’

Ok!

I have killed several rodents accidentally over the years. Twice, I forgot that I had set humane traps and the mice starved to death. Once, I dragged a box out of the way in order to see a mouse and I dragged the box over the mouse and snapped its little neck. Plus one night I left the lid of my mother’s barrel of chicken feed open and it stormed overnight and the barrel filled with rain and the rats that were attracted to the smell of the chicken feed got into the barrel and drowned. Every single one of these times I have made someone else deal with the consequences: my best friend, Kyle, who has been the person who is most often around. Once something died under our bathroom floor in Brixton, but it smelled so disgusting that I think it might have been a rat, and I can’t take responsibility for it.

Everyone who has had a mouse problem has been in touch with me to express their sympathy and told me their horror stories: droppings in the bed, scurrying in the walls, sleeplessness, having to move out for weeks, three mice drowned and floating in an open jug of oil. I’m fascinated by these stories and want more of them.

‘I hope you’re JOKING about borrowing a cat,’ someone on the internet said to me. ‘You should use HUMANE traps.’

They come out when I’ve been cooking, emerging from their little holes and sniffing the air appreciatively. A mouse climbed into my coat pocket and ate a biscuit. I had the opportunity to smash one with a rolling pin, but I blew it.