Thursday, 21 October 2004 | The hunted

Twice, now, my cat has executed a mouse in front of me. As much as I like mice, however, the sporadic dead ones in my apartment no longer seem to faze me. (Apparently it takes exactly five mice to make me jaded.)

The first time I actually witnessed a live murder, I was sitting on the couch eating a plate of food. At first I was alarmed (Should I do something? And what?) and surprised (My obese and lethargic cat is capable of hunting! Who knew?). I quickly realized that, despite my sympathy for the mouse, there was nothing I could do for it.

After watching the hunter and hunted dance in front of me for a couple minutes, I began to ignore them and resumed eating, only pausing whenever she flung the dead mouse in the air, on guard in case it landed on my plate. (Murder is a lot of things, but I never expected "somewhat tiresome" to be one of them.) After it was over (she actually ate it), I felt a little strange toward her, regarding her as, um, an animal.

Last night (execution #2) I yelled at her, asking that she not jump on my bed with the (still live) mouse in her mouth. When she obeyed, I mindlessly turned back to my computer, more or less blocking out the suffering that was going on behind me. At that point something became suddenly clear to me: my heart is a lump of black coal.

***

When I found out I was going to meet him, I wrote it on my list of things to do, not because I was worried I’d forget (I was admittedly kind of giddy), but because I thought that it might be a nice thing to come across later.

- write instructions for coding in-depth documents
- do photo research
- update the publications page
- meet Al Gore

He was shorter than I expected, articulate, and had a firm handshake. He also had presence, and a boxy, Transformer-esque suit.

When I returned to my desk, I marked the last item off the list.