The Mouse in the Couch
Several days ago my cats were watching the stove very intently. Sure enough, after two days of attentive watching, Milo caught the mouse. He immediately ran with it downstairs where he let it go so he could catch it again. It ran underneath the couch and got away. We moved the couch and attempted to find/catch it, but it was gone.
Today Milo was very interested in a corner of the couch cushions. My daughter went to see what he was looking at and discovered mouse droppings on the couch cushions. We realized to our dismay that the escaped mouse, instead of finding its way back to where it was caught, just took up residence in our couch living off the crumbs of food dropped in the couch cracks. Thus began the careful dismantling of the couch and adventures in mouse catching. It went from under couch cushions to under couch to across the room under a different section of couch to across the room behind a garbage can to under the door of the laundry room to under the dryer to hide inside a section of dryer vent that was laying on the floor. As we chased it from each location, we tried to get cats to catch it for us. In the end we stuffed rags into either end of the vent pipe and relocated the mouse to outside.
Then we had a cleaning and mopping project which included removal of crumbs, sanitation of all surfaces with disinfectants and washing all the cushion covers. In the end we’ll have a couch that is much cleaner than it was, but it wasn’t our intended use for an hour of our Sunday afternoon.