Tibbs

Sally

Okay, this is a story about the cat, the mouse and the quilt... Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin....

As I've already mentioned Tibbs is a hunter and usually eats her kill. As a rule the only evidence of success is a few feathers and a beak, or maybe a tail and foot (she always leaves something!)

One day she crept in and took herself into my daughters bedroom. On hearing the noise coming from above daughter goes upstairs and witnesses said cat playing with desperate to escape mouse. Daughter shouts, cats grabs mouse and disappears under the bed. When mum (me) gets home - extremely tired after a long day at work - daughter tells story and insists mum checks her room.

So, I wearily climb the stairs, I look under the bed, I move a few boxes. No mouse. Must have been eaten we decide.

Later that evening daughter goes to bed. Within minutes Gizmo (the near comotose cat) is busy making a noise under the bed. Daughter yells, mums climbs the stairs again. (By the way, dad deals with spider, wasps and bees!) Daughter is sitting on her desk, Giz is busy under the bed. Mum pulls bedclothes off bed, mum then pulls boxes (and other stuff) from under bed, finally mum pulls bed away from wall. No mouse, just a small(ish) spider for which dad is summoned up the stairs to deal with.

Bed goes back against the wall, boxes (and other stuff) goes back under the bed, bedclothes go back on the bed.

Three days later daughter complains of a funny smell in her room. Mum and dad can't smell anything and accuse daughter of eating too many beans.

The following day, daughter again complains of funny smell. Mum and dad still can't smell anything. Daughter tells us to give up smoking!

On the evening of day five (after the bed stripping event) mum catches a whiff of a slightly musty smell in vicinity of daughter's bedroom. I enter the room but cannot be sure of exactly where the smell is coming from. A process of elimination is called for.

Starting at the door I crawl around the room sniffing in corners and cupboards and as I approach the bed the smell becomes stronger. I pull everything out from under the bed and - nothing.

Okay, so now I'm thinking, maybe daughter had a point about the smell, but where the heck was it coming from? "Under the floorboards is a good bet" says dad. So as I start to pull the bedding from the bed my hand touches something... wet and squidgy! and inside the quilt cover... urgh! The mouse, dead and decomposing, had been inside the cover - daughter goes into hysterics about how she has been sleeping with a dead body for five days.

Next problem - getting the body out of the cover. Cover, quilt and recently departed mouse are carried downstairs. Quilt is pulled out of cover by dad while mum keeps the body in the corner of the quilt. Can you imagine the smell which was by now - smoker or not - very, very pungent! I then carry the cover into the garden and turn it inside out to expel the body. It fell out with a plop onto the patio (drop a tomato from five feet up to get the idea!) At which point Sally (the dog) rushed over and, in one gulp, swallowed it!

From that day to this daughter refuses to have a cover on her quilt!

Copyright © Pam Morris
February 9, 2000