Stuff, Big Mo and Rain

What to write about this week?  The horribly stupid law in Michigan requiring women to have insurance before they can get medical treatment after being raped?  Or the closing of women’s health centers in Texas that diagnose and treat women for ovarian cancer, mammograms, STD’s obtained from less than careful partners, etc., all because they also provide women with abortions without caring one whit about why a woman might need an abortion?   

No.  Too much.  That along with the loss of 227 people in an airplane that is somewhere, and one doesn’t know what the definition of ‘loss’ is.  Does it mean the people simply are lost somewhere, or does lost in this sense mean dead?  (I will never forget the night a good friend called to tell me they had lost her husband.  The wrong definition of ‘lost’ popped into my head, but thanks to something or someone, I kept my mouth shut until I knew which definition she was using.)  Or I could write about the really tense situation in Crimea and the Ukraine, except I know so little about what is actually going on, although that doesn’t seem to bother some right-wing pundits.  Or I could write about how really disgusting the right-wing politicians are who are bad-mouthing President Obama while he is in some really tense conversations with Putin, who hasn’t a clue about civil rights like free speech.   

So, in an effort to not write about all of that I will instead relate the experiences with our over-sized house cat, Big Mo.  When we got Big Mo he weighed only 8 ounces.  He now weighs in at about 20 pounds.  I have described him before, how he has a passion for scones from Costco, and how he tried to get inside my bathrobe one night because I had dropped a crumb there while eating some scones while reading in bed.  Ever try to extract an intent 20 pound house cat from going where he really wants to go? 

The problem with Big Mo now is that he is in seventh cat heaven now that Spring (albeit a very dry one here on the central coast of California – the driest of the drought areas) is here, the weather is a tad warmer, and the mice are out!!  And of course Mo believes that the appropriate place to play with them is in the house.  Since this habit of his is of long duration, we have gotten some “Rat Zappers”, which are little things that have batteries, and when a mouse is enticed into one, they are electrocuted.  More humane than the old fashioned ones, for sure.  Of course, Bill has a new toilet plunger with a bell shape, so he tries to entice the mouse into that first, flips it up, and goes outside and gives the mouse the ride of its life as he throws the plunger into the air on a trajectory that will eject the mouse in transit.  But back to the zappers.  We tried all sorts of things in them that we thought mice would like to nibble on, but mostly to no avail.  Then, one day we stopped on our way home and bought some fish and fries to go at one of the local restaurants.  Out of desperation, Bill popped one in the zapper and, voila, within hours, there was the zapped mouse.  I’m not sure if any French fry would work, or if only the ones from this particular place, but we don’t necessarily want to embarrass them by advertising that their fries are perfect bait for mice.  Although they are also tasty for humans.   

Mo brings in so many mice we have started naming them by location.  The chair mouse.  The pantry mouse.  The closet mouse.  Now that one was a real problem in that when one took a pair of shoes out, it required some care not to either put the shoe on with a mouse in it, or dump the mouse back out into the closet.  But at this point in time, thanks to the zapper and the fries, we have gotten them all.  This we know because of Mo’s actions.  If there is one around, he, of course, makes every effort to get it.  If he is sleeping, we know we are mouse-free. 

We really want Mo to catch mice, since that is basically what we have him for.  By keeping the rodent population near the house thinned out, he eliminates one food source for snakes.  Particularly rattle snakes.  We haven’t seen one close to the house for some time now.  Which is good, believe me.

We understand that it might rain in this next week or so.  Probably not too much, but it will keep Big Mo inside, which is a nice side effect.  Our desperate need for rain reminds me of the verse from St. Francis’, “Canticle of the Sun”. 

“We praise, You, Lord, for Sister Water,

            So useful, humble, precious and pure.”