Storytelling Week 10: Cat and Mouse

It had been a while since Mama and Papa Mouse had a baby mouse around. The first two... well... they were eaten. They were eaten by IT. 

Ever since the Cat learned of its dominion over the entire house, he had made it clear that no one else was welcome. He paid no mind to the established, cosy residence of the Mouse family. He had paid no mind that they had been living there long before his grubby paws crossed the threshold. He had paid no mind to the sound of their tears after he made the first two Mouse family babies his dinner. 

Mama and Papa Mouse had enough of IT. Once they discovered they were pregnant for the third time, they were determined that this baby would survive. They concealed its birth by holding it close to their bodies when they traveled, making the baby almost undetectable to IT.

Doing this ensured that Baby Mouse grew up healthy and strong. He kept growing and growing, so much that it made it difficult to conceal him as the family traveled. One day, he lagged slightly behind and Cat spotted him! Outraged that something had slipped right under his nose, determined was he to make this Baby Mouse turn out like the last two!

Cat went to work on rigging up traps and coming up with various schemes on how to catch Baby Mouse. First, he decided to set out some cheese underneath a propped up stack of books. Whenever Baby Mouse came near, he would tug away the prop and the books would fall on top of Baby Mouse. He waited patiently for his foe to come near.

Baby Mouse was and extremely brilliant. He noticed the peculiar placement of the books and the cheese. Wanting the cheese badly, but wanting his life more, he decided to make a lasso-of-sorts and grab the cheese away from the books. Before cat knew it, the cheese had disappeared as he heard a few contented squeaks from Baby Mouse's direction. 

Cat kept making traps similar to these, and Baby Mouse kept fooling him. Until one day, when Cat came up with a foolproof plan. He decided to make a slide going straight from the Mouse residence to the drain in the bottom of the sink. Baby Mouse knew it was a trap before he stepped onto the slide, but he also had a plan.

Going down the drain he slowed himself so that the landing into the sewage system would hurt less. There, he wandered until he found a giant Mouse neighborhood! His parents had told him of its existence, and he knew it was time for them to band together and defeat IT. 

In the middle of the night they coated their paws with the remnants of a rubber cement can that had floated its way down the river of sewage. Using its adhesive properties, the band of mice climbed their way up the drain into the battlefield. Huddling up behind the coffee maker, they waited until dawn to execute their... plan.

The next morning Cat came out to remove the slide from the drain on the sink, and right when he bent down to unfasten it, the mice bombarded him. Cuts and slices from teeth all over took Cat down in an instant. Right as he was drawing his final breaths, Baby Mouse came up and told him that he knew about all of the attempts on his life. He told him family would stick together and help family, and it was time for the terror to end once and for all! Cat breathed his last as his vision of Baby Mouse blurred through his slowly closing eyes, the words swimming in his dizzy mind.

Perhaps one of the most famous cat and mouse couples around! 

Image Cred: Animated TV

_______________________________________________________

Author's Note: This story is loosely based on one from Tales of the North American Indians by Stith Thompson in 1929. In the original story, titled The Jealous Uncle, there is an Uncle who kills his nephews for no reason. After he had killed two, his wife tried to conceal the third-born by pretending he was a girl. Eventually, the uncle found out and tried every way he could to kill the boy, but the boy was too smart. Outwitting the uncle, he eventually gave in and was put in a box to drift out to sea. The boy landed in a far away, receptive land and built up strength. He later went back and defeated his uncle for treating him and his parents so poorly. This story is kind of similar in that I have a rivalry between two characters, one on a power trip and one that is humble and seemingly unable to defeat the other. It was the first thing that came to mind for a story, and whenever you've been trying to come up with an idea for almost an hour, you go with the first thing that comes to mind!