in a people house

One of the kittens caught a mouse over the weekend.  Which is great news, because she is doing her job and every one needs to contribute to the household load.

One of the kittens caught a mouse over the weekend.  Which is terrible news, because that means a mouse was in the house.

We had a mouse in the apartment on Spruce Street, 500 years ago when we lived on Spruce in the little apartment with the swanky address.  Bailey caught that one, and kept it alive for more than a day and wouldn't let anyone near it.  She slept with it under her chest, hiding out under an easy chair.  She took it to the litter box and held it in her teeth while she went.  I finally got it away from her and threw it out back in someone else's dumpster.

We never had a mouse in this house or any other house we've lived in.  Or maybe we did, and I just didn't know because no one ever caught it.  Gross.  It's hard to sleep when there was a mouse in the house.

My mom had mice in her hice. 
Wrong. 
Mice in her house.  Mouse rhymes with house.  The plural of "mouse" is "mice".  The plural of "house" is "houses".  English is funny and sometimes my fingers don't keep up with what my brain knows.  Mice doesn't rhyme with houses and my mom only has one house.  I'd much rather have a mouse in my house than mice in my house.  For several reasons, not just the adorable rhyme.

Supposedly you can pretty effectively control for mice using peppermint oil.  You can put it on cottonballs and put them in your ducts or wherever you think they are scurrying around.  And you can plug up mouse holes with steel wool and they can't chew through.  I don't have ducts because my house was invented before ducts were invented.  But we still use duct tape in excessive amounts like every other normal American family, just not on ducts.  I think ours got in through the laundry room because the cat is poking around an awful lot back there now.

Layla brought the mouse to Jacob, who is absolutely swooning because he learned that a cat gives prey to the person they love the best.  I don't know if that's true, but I think it is.  It makes me happy to believe that because it makes all the birds Tyler caught on Daly Street almost worth it, since she loved to put the heads and hearts in my shoes.  Tyler was an indoor cat too.  We had a bird infestation.  In our house.  They were somehow getting down the chimney and into our hot water tank.  The ones that escaped through some sort of release slot or whatever in the tank were killed by the cat.  The ones that didn't boiled to death in the hot water tank.  We had no idea how they were getting in until the man from the gas company was out to relight our pilots and found a few dozen of them swimming in there.  In the water that we showered with.  Washed dishes with.  Drank.

I've been told by plumbers and rota-rooter guys and old people to never brush your teeth in the shower or swish your mouth with tub/shower water or drink anything but cold water from the tap.  I never understood why until I saw the inside of a hot water tank.  So nasty.  Birds weren't even the worst thing in there.  It can be like primordial stew. 
I'm guessing tanks have come a long way now that people care about the earth and energy and stuff, and maybe that sort of thing can't happen anymore but OMGross.

I need a hermetically sealed house.