Cats 3, Mice 0

I came home from work yesterday to find a small, dead mouse on the floor in the living room, near my shoes. Then when I was getting ready for bed last night I noticed Sable hanging out in that same area, and when I came back in from letting the dogs out, there was a second small dead mouse on the floor in the same spot. She is definitely earning her keep this week. What a good kitty! Here's my little mouser:

I should feel bad that she is apparently taking out a family of mice, one by one, but I don't. I have a live and let live attitude until they enter my house, and then they're fair game. And I have five cats, so as has been proven this week, my house is no save haven from the cold for the rodents of the world. And it's a good thing that the cats are good mousers, because the dogs apparently couldn't care less. My old dogs, Bo and Bailey, could sniff out a mouse and corral it before it even knew what happened. Willow and Bernie don't even seem to notice they're there. What use are these dogs, anyway? Oh yeah, they're good at giving and receiving affection. Okay.

Speaking of the dogs, Willow's ear is healing well, and she and Bernie are getting comfortable enough that they're starting to play with each other. They were trying to play last night, which was kind of interesting to watch - they're very silent when they play together, and there is a lot of climbing on top of each other and mouthing at each other with jaws wide open; they were having fun. I, however, was way too tense to let them enjoy it for long, because Bernie's teeth were way too close to her poor ears, and I just can't go through that ear bleeding thing again! Not this soon, anyway. So I kept stopping them. I'll relax about that after the stitches are out of her ear and some time has passed, I'm sure.

Also, Bernie is cute as can be, but I seriously need to break him of a couple of bad habits before I'll be happy. First, he's 2 or 3 years old, but he was a stray who apparently had horrible owners before he became a stray (as is obvious by the bum leg), and I don't think they left him inside much, because he isn't totally house trained. He's fine when I'm there - he holds it until I let him out, and he's even asked to go out a time or two. And he holds it all night, too, because he sleeps in my room with me, and I've never seen any messes in there. But when I'm at work during the day, he thinks nothing of "messing" on the mudroom floor - both liquid and solid. And it's driving me crazy. There is one thing that I will not stand for in a dog, and that's messing in my house. He's an adult dog, he is perfectly capable of holding his waste until I get home (Willow does, and both dogs before her did), and yet he doesn't. I yell at him about going in the mudroom, I praise him when he goes outside, and it doesn't seem to be sinking through his thick head yet. It better soon, though. C'mon Bernie! If you stop going in the house and if you stop trying to eat the cat food, you'll be the perfect dog! You can do it!

Anyway, that's enough animal talk for one day. This is totally becoming a dog/cat blog lately, isn't it? Sorry about that. If you like it, good, but I don't want to bore anyone who doesn't. They're just what's happening in my life recently.

Well, them and the brother situation, which hasn't gotten any better since I alluded to it in an earlier entry. I still won't go into details, but I will say that the words "jail" and "extradition" are involved, and the story broke in his hometown newspaper the other day, and things are going from bad to worse. His girlfriend has been calling me to tell me all the news, but frankly I wish she would stop, because I really don't want to hear anymore. I had written him out of my life a long time ago, albeit sadly, and this isn't making me want to let him back in. She has talked to a relative of someone who was there when the supposed crime was supposed to have taken place, and they say he didn't do anything, and I sincerely hope that is true, and that he'll be found innocent and all of this will go away. In the meantime, though, I would really prefer to hide my head in the proverbial sand and ignore it all.

And that's enough for this entry, I think. I hope you all are having wonderful weeks!