sometimes they bounce around like tiny kangaroos and sometimes they whizz about like wind-up mice

50% of the time I can catch them and throw them outside

the rest of the time they hide in my wall of books and camp out there for days

then on occasion I'll see one scaling a shelf or crawling across something, and it stares at me and I stare back and we just stare at each other until one of us moves and then it darts off to hide again

but then there's other times nobody sees it for days and then suddenly! there's a thump because the mouse jumped off something

and the cat will wake from what looked like a comfortably deep sleep and she'll hop off the bed in stealth mode and sneak over

and she will sit there for hours waiting for a mouse to come out

there's something amusing about it

but also when she does finally catch it I can rescue it and throw it outside again which is the best part

BE FREE MOUSE, THOU SHALT NOT BE EATEN

at the moment we're in the purgatory of waiting for a noise, I'm hoping it'll progress to catching time before I go to bed. that poor bugger's probably hungry