Oh, bugger.

On Sunday morning, I hauled my sorry arse out of bed. The house looked like ground zero would have looked had it had wine bottles and the entire contents of a kitchen scattered over it. There were people asleep on the couch and in my study, leftover from Saturday night's dinner party.

I wandered out onto the back verandah to start collecting beer bottles, wine glasses and the chess set that the boys had abandoned at dawn, only to find a stunned dove sitting on the buffalo grass. It had one wing stuck out at an angle; its neck feathers were damp and Mr Furpants was prowling nearby. I scolded him and picked up the dove.

"Bad kitty!"

"Miaow?"

"No, bad kitty!" (smack)

"Miaoowww??"

"No! Bad! Kitty!" (Smack!)

Eventually, I stood on a chair to put the dove up in the fretwork of the verandah, so it would be out of reach of Mr F's claws. I should admit that I have tried this in the past and it hasn't worked, but I was mildly hungover and really didn't have the strength to dispatch the poor thing. Yes, I knew that it had been mauled. Yes, I knew that it was probably in shock and/or would die of cat bite bugs. But it wasn't dead yet, so I put it out of kittyreach, hoping that it would gather its feathers and fly away.

I peered out the back door a few minutes later and saw Mr F standing on his hind legs on the arm of a chair, swiping at the dove four feet above. I'm not sure the dove even noticed. As I watched, it began to wobble on its perch and as the door slammed behind me, it rolled forwards, flapping drunkenly.

And instead of landing harmlessly on its back on the grass, it broke its neck on the edge of pavers.

Cheerful, yeah? Remind me to tell you about the time I visited the morgue.

Roachtard

It's amazing how a small thing can put a dent in your morning. For example, a cockroach in the washing machine can really bugger things up.

It was very, very dead when I found it, and presumably it was now very clean, too, because I'd just done two loads of washing. It appeared to have all its legs, but for some reason, the thought of essence of roach all over my sheets, towels and smalls didn't do it for me and I had to wash everything again. That's close to being a criminal offence, in these water restricted times.

What I'd really like to know is what sort of dumb-arse cockroach gets in a washing machine? There was a veritable cockycopia of kitty fodder not a metre away, but no, it had to get in the damned washing machine. I would have to get the retarded cockroaches.

You dirty rat!

There's a corpse on the back verandah.

It's a gift of love from Mr Furpants, of course: a medium-sized rat with a brown back and a cream tummy. I'm telling myself that it's just having a little nap in the shade, so who am I to disturb its rest? So what if its feet are stuck in the air and its ropey little tail is as stiff as a chopstick? It's not chewed or otherwise mutilated - Mr F doesn't deign to eat rats. It's probaby very, very tired. It might be having a nap.

I know that sooner or later, I'm going to have to dig a hole and bury it, but I'm trying to put that off. Bloke has gone fishing with Number One Brother, so I can't make him do it, even though corpse disposal is clearly in his job description.

I might just go and check whether it's still there. It could have blown away. Just talk amongst yourself for a minute.

Back again. Oh holy God, the ants have found it. This is not good. I really am going to have to get the spade and dig it a shallow grave. The bin's only just been emptied and it's rather warm, so the old bag-and-bin trick isn't advisable. A rat in the bin is worth... well, something exceptionally pongy. And large. Dead rats really punch above their weight in the stinky stakes. The problem with burying it is that I'm bound to dig up other victims of our vicious little hunter. We always tend to bury the dead near the fences, so every time a new grave is sunk, older skeletons surface. It's quite macabre, really. I suppose it's lucky we don't live on an ancient Indian burial ground, or we'd be under siege from zombie rats and mouses.

Christ, I suppose I'd better go and do it. I bet Bloke comes home just as I'm patting down the last shovelful of earth. He'd better have caught some damned fish.

I've got culture, damnit.

Would anyone like to hazard a guess as to what this is?

I'll give you a few options:

(a) an extremely expensive yak's milk cheese that is considered a delicacy fit only for Nepalese royalty;

(b) politically-conscious modern art - it's a representation of Australia in decay under the Howard Government;

(c) an unemptied ash tray into which someone spilled red wine;

(d) some Philadelphia Cream Cheese that I found at the back of my fridge.

All right, that one was sticking out like the proverbial. It's obviously Option D (though I would also have accepted Option B). I found this baby when I was making lunch today. I had a fancy for cream cheese and tomato on toast. For some reason, there were three cartons of cream cheese in the fridge. The first one had a few patches of penicillin and something reddish growing on it, so I said "euww" and binned it. The third carton was new, unopened and still usable, but behind door number two, we had the thing of beauty you see above.

It had a use by date of August 12, which probably means I opened it in June or July. I'm pretty impressed by the way the mould has completely engulfed the cheese. Look at it, it's crenellated and wavey and it looks velvety soft! There could be an entire society in there, a la that episode of the Simpsons.

Obviously, I'd be lying if I said this was an unusual occurrence. I only throw cream cheese out when it's mouldy, so it's just a matter of when I notice it. In this case, it's a real champion effort and I'm tempted to just return it to the fridge and see what happens. It's a bit wiffy if you take the lid off (which I did for your benefit, to take the photo), but then you don't actually need to take the lid off to appreciate the effect. A cream cheese container is the perfect layman's petrie dish because it comes with a clear lid.

Anyway, once I'd found my little science experiment, I started hunting through the fridge and pantry for other prehistoric shopping. So far I've found:

• Three tubs of wildberry (what exactly is a wildberry?) yoghurt that should have been used by July 18.
• A half-used jar of green tomato pickle that died in November 2005.
• One zucchini that had turned to green sludge in its plastic bag (think of squashed caterpillars and then add water).
• Some carrots that were so elderly they'd grown hairs.
• A bag of apples that have been Around For A While, but since they'd probably been in cold storage for a year before I bought them, I guess that one doesn't count.
• One bottle of gourmet olive oil that was bottled in 2003, but that I have yet to open (and now I'm not game - who can spell "rancid", children?)
• A few sachets of yeast that weren't going to be raising bread any time soon.
• A jar of some odd-looking mixed spice that included whole peppercorns and mustard seeds; I didn't remember buying it, so it must have been there a looooong time. I think it might have been chutney mix, in which case it was at least six years old because that's when I realiesd life was too short to arse around with preserves.)
• A bag of bread mix that ran out six months ago and had some sort of crawlies in it. How did the little bastards get in? It wasn't even opened. Do the manufacturers drop in a scoop of weevil eggs as a biological use by time bomb to make you buy new ones every six months?
• An unopened bottle of Caesar salad dressing that ran out in November 2005. (It was full fat, so I didn't really care.)
• One unopened jar of tartare sauce that ran out before everyone realised Mark Latham was a freakshow. (Ditto Caesar dressing.)
• A half-bottle of raspberry cordial that was packed in November 2004, but (creepily) has no use by date. (I guess it does explain why some little kids have pupils that wouldn't look out of place on a speed freak on a five day bender, though.)
• A full box of taco shells that ran out in November 2005.
• An unopened packet of fortune cookies from the local Thai takeaway that were delivered Ford-knows-when. Obviously we didn't feel like a reading that day.

I think I've already found all the weird stuff in the fridge, but the pantry might take a little longer. But if you get an invite to dinner Chez Hack, don't worry. The booze never gets a chance to get out of date and the takeaway is always fresh.

Guts, but still no glory

Ah, it must be spring. There are birds singing in the peppercorn tree, the days are getting longer and there are mouse guts on the back doormat.

I can't tell you how much I hate having mouse guts on the doormat, or anywhere else for that matter. When Mr Furpants was a wee pussyfluff, we thought he was going to be completely incompetent as a hunter. He had no tail control at all. We'd watch him stalking something and he'd get terribly excited, thrashing his tail around and scaring away his quarry. "Oh, thank Ford!" we thought happily. "He's not going to be bring us corpses." Pffft. Mr Furpants has grown into The Most Vicious Little Hunter in the Known Universe. Boba Fett, step aside.

I came home from the pub last night to find kitty engaged in the first mousercise of the spring. Mousercise is horrible. It involves much squeaking as the mouse is tossed into the air and caught again. Of course I feel guilty and awful and sorry for the mouse, but since I rescued one and it bit me, I've pretty much left 'em to their fate.

Yes, I was bitten by a mouse.

Puss was torturing the poor little critter, so I cuffed him around the ears and took it away. "Aww," I said, cupping it in two hands. "Look, it's all wet. And isn't it cute?" Ten seconds later, I felt little teeth chiselling into my palm, literally biting the hand that rescued it. "What? You little bastard!" I cried, shaking my hand to dislodge the mouse. It landed in the flower bed and looked a little dazed. To my shame, I said, "There, puss, eat that!" A friend pointed out I was obviously a long way from nirvana.

Even after being bit with one mouse, I still tried to rescue another one. Puss was scrounging about in the alyssum under the apple tree and the victim managed to escape onto the verandah. "Oh, poor little beastie," I thought, picking it up. Sadly, this mouse was just as dumb as the last one. It took a flying leap from my hands to make a run for it. Unfortunately, The Bloke had just bought a new piece of glass for the kitchen window and propped it against one of the verandah posts while he prepared the window frame. Puss was still hunting in the alyssum, but caught a glimpse of the mouse when it landed. Through the pane of glass. Naturally, he jumped straight through the glass, smashed it, snatched up the mouse and bolted, all without getting a scratch.

So, as un-Buddhist as it is, these days I leave the mice to their fates. I figure the third time I save one, it will probably manage to set fire to the house as it runs away. (Rats, of course, get to fend for themselves, because they carried the Black Death. Sorry, guys, but the sins of the fathers and all.)

So, Tuesday was the first mousercise of the season, but I didn't see what he did with the corpse. Tonight, when I opened the back door to call Mr Furpants, he was already sitting on the doormat. "Uh oh," I thought. "Bad sign." One night when I did that, he had a rat banged up against the door step and it tried to run inside to escape. Sure enough, there he was with the arse-end of a mouse. Including the tail. (He'd already eaten the rest.)

I'm torn between disgust and amazement at the way puss can deal with a mouse. He can literally eat everything but the guts and something that looks suspiciously like the liver. It's not like he's got a steak knife and an opposable thumb, here - all he has at his disposal is teeth and a set of claws that he likes to sharpen on Bloke's thongs. Repulsive, yet amazing. (The sharpening process and the mouse dissection.)

Bloke is, naturally, responsible for the removal of all corpses, or part thereof. He doesn't cook, so it's only fair. Imagine how double-plus-unpleased I was when he went overseas during the summer and Mr Furpants went a little feral and brought me eight rats in one week. After the second one, I lost the will to dig little graves for them and ended up by shrouding them in freezer bags and entombing them in the wheelie bin. Handy hint, by the way: you can put nearly anything in a bin (including prawn tails and crab shells) and it won't smell that bad, but throw in just one dead rat and all bets are off.

I probably should point out that our house and garden do not appear to be overrun with rodents. We don't have long grass in our yard, or chooks, or a state-sponsored mouse and rat breeding program. I have no idea where he gets them from, but I choose to blame the neighbours for having grubby yards and no mousers of their own.

But what I'd really like to know is, why can't Mr Furpants bring home chilled bottles of reisling and leave them on the door step? That would be much more civilised.