He who hesitates has lost his mouse
“Sire, she’s gotten away.” This quote from the Disney animated classic “Cinderella” sprung to my mind this morning. In the film, the highly anticipated, true love of the Prince – that the king had planned a royal gala to arrange the meeting with – had escaped from the watchful eye of the grand duke.
The king, awakened from his dreams of wedding bells and playful grandchildren, is enraged that the announcement of the engagement he was expecting was replaced by the duke’s hesitant words, “Sire, she’s gotten away.”
An odd scene to have sprung forth on a frozen morning such as this, I know. However, when I came down the stairs to pack wood into the fire, I saw an odd sight in the mudroom. All of my cats were in there, waltzing around in a circle. It seemed rehearsed, almost like the dance, and I shook my head to clear the scene.
Upon further inspection, I saw that the cats were working together to keep a small mouse within the circle. None of them was swatting at it, but they would block its exit when it approached. The one cat who goes outside to hunt seemed to be in charge of the game, as if she were teaching the others what to do.
This was particularly odd, as she is the most timid of the cats in the house and rarely asserts herself. Indeed, she is often the brunt of unwarranted slaps from her brother as she unsuspectingly rounds a corner. She can be lying in a tight ball on the couch and the other cats will leap onto her, seemingly just to disturb her.
But this morning, it was her show. The other three cats hesitated when the mouse approached them, but when it came her way, she immediately centered it again. And the mouse seemed unfazed, and certainly unharmed.
After a few seconds, I shifted position and one of the cats broke concentration on the game and glanced at me. The mouse, sensing an opportunity, bolted toward the space. Free from the circle, it began looking for an escape from the room.
The cats all began following it as it scurried along the baseboard. They nearly recaptured it a couple of times, but their hesitancy cost them their reward. Finally, as the mice in Cinderella were also able to do in fleeing from their nemesis, Lucifer, the mouse found a knothole that it could crawl into that the cat paws couldn’t follow.
My timid cat was infuriated when the others returned to the circle empty-clawed. Perhaps, like the king, she was dreaming of a very different ending than she received. I could almost hear the cats whisper, “Callie, it got away.”
She responded in a manner similar to the cartoon king, with ire and yelling. She began growling and cuffing the other cats about the head. I’ve never seen her be the aggressor, so it caught me off guard and, I’ll admit, cracked me up a bit. When she felt she had chastened them enough, she walked away to start licking her paws, while the others sat in a semi-circle, staring at the knothole.
I left them to it, and went to get a cup of coffee, humming the “Cinderella” theme song as I went.
Laura Zoeller can be reached at zoeller5@verizon.net.