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.

In which red suspects she has missed her calling

Oh, crikey, I feel virtuous! I've been paving in the front garden. Mr Furpants showed his approval by sunbaking on the new bricks, but he is a bit of a paving whore.

The final result was more artistic than neat, because I used old red bricks and no two were the same size, colour or even shape. But it's rustic, all right? And what can you expect when some of them used to be the walls of my brother's outside dunny?

Admittedly, Bloke did have to do the levelling and measuring, because I'm incompetent at such things. (Numbers? Isn't that a crappy American TV show?) I have, however, discovered a hitherto unsuspected talent for whacking things with a mallet.

So bugger this hacking gig - it should have been the tradey's life for me. I'm sure I could do builders' crack with the best of them.

The white-footed hack

How difficult can it be, being a half-hearted hack?
You don't even need an opposable thumb.

And you can lie down on the job.
Pfft, what's she been carping about all week?

Example of feline lunacy #819

Right, the cat's gone mad. He's finally cracked. I was annoyed when he decided he needed to mark his territory by spraying on the washing basket a few weeks ago. I was horrified when he brought a live sparrow into the dining room last week.

Those things I could cope with. Unpleasant, but normal cat behaviour, right? Not this time. I just found him licking the soles of my leather thongs. He was licking foot sweat off leather. I'd swear his eyes had rolled back in his head. ~shudder~

Come to think of it, though, he does have a bit of a thong fetish. He's always been fond of using Bloke's rubber thongs to sharpen his claws and I've caught him having a kip on them a couple of times.

But what should I do? Take him to a kitty psychiatirst? Is this just the first step before he starts stealing the neighbours' thongs and hoarding them? Or before he turns to a life of crime to finance his thong habbit? And what if he starts mainlining?

Whaaa?

Huh? I was asleep! Right, you're getting bitten.

All hail the Lord of the House

Meet Mr Furpants, Bringer of Mouses, Raiser of Hell and all-round demanding moggy.

Mr Furpants has a thing about height. For some reason, he doesn't like to do anything at all on the floor if he can help it. He even eats from the laundry bench. At the moment, he is obsessed with the lefthand corner of my desk. Why? No idea. I can only guess that he thinks if he sits there, he'll be the centre of attention. Plus, the desk is higher than the futon behind me, where he has a perfectly nice blankie. That pile of junk he's nesting on is made up of some paperwork, a notebook, a Writers' Centre newsletter, a watercolour pad, a framed picture (with glass) and a mobile phone catalogue. Comfy, yeah? Cats, man.

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.