The Horror

Sit back and hear tell of a tale so gruesome you will be compulsively washing your hands as many times as I have today.

While visiting with my mother yesterday we happened to be distracted by the antics of her cat, not an unusual occurrence by far but it did draw our attention to the bedroom the cat was racing back and forth in. She had found a toy to bat around, playfully racing under the curtains and then diving out at whatever object had captured her fancy. However, one thing gave me pause. “Why is your rug so dirty?” I asked my mother, speaking of the clumps of dirt scattered across the floor.

She was aghast. The rug was clean the last time she went in there, two hours before. I pointed out to her the dark chunks clearly visible against the white rug, but she was adamant. Doors and windows were all locked. No one had been out of the house all morning. There should be no dirt in there. Unfortunately, she was right.

We both went in to investigate, and were stricken by the odd nature of the filth. Truly it was not dirt. It was fuzzy, like cotton filling, but it was brown and who would ever bother to dye stuffing? I parted the curtains the cat was hiding under and found the source of the strange dirt, the toy she had been batting around. My mother has several cat toys in her house, some gray and covered with fake fur to make it look like a real mouse. But something was different about this one.

It is at this point I shall tell you that six months ago during high summer, I helped my mother search for the source of a foul odor stemming from that very same bedroom, the kind of odor that only comes from a dead animal left to rot in the heat. We never could find where it came from. Until, well, you should see where I’m going with this.

It wasn’t a toy. It was a mummified mouse.

Upon her realization of that fact, my mother ran screaming from the room. I’m fairly certain you know who had to clean it up. I took off my glasses so I wouldn’t have to look at it while I dumped it in the trash can, then vacuumed up all the fur. The next step was throwing the vacuum cleaner bag in with the mouse and emptying the trash can, and finally retconning that out of my life so I can pretend it never happened.

Why do I share this with you? A) to show that I can write in other ways than short, choppy sentences, and B) so you all hope I never run out of ideas for blog posts again.