Home invasion

The garden has been invaded. Not by snakes or snails (or even puppy dog’s tails), but by Mike.



Of course I understand that now that the garden looks so nice and the bench so inviting, he wants to get into it. And I had always intended that he should get to enjoy it, too. That’s why I spent more than a day widening the path and trying to remove likely-to-trip-up rocks from it.

But it is a bit of a palaver. First I have to get Mike, with his walker (no way he’s going to make it down the path even after my work with his cane alone) up the back path to the car. Then I have to drive him (with the walker and his folding chair – in case the bench isn’t high enough for him) down to the front of the house and help guide him into the garden. Of course it turns out the beautiful bench is high enough, so I get stuck with the folding chair. After 15 minutes of sitting in this, reading my book, I feel as if I’m skipping school. So much to do. So I leave him to it for an hour, go back and reverse the process to return him to the house. And the next day he wants to do it again. Honestly, some people.

Meanwhile, the downstairs has also been invaded – not by Mike, but by a mouse. The disadvantage to having a blind cat is his oblivion to Mickey Mouse scurrying around.

I suspect Angie of sneaking in during the day to empty Tri’s bowl of food, then I realise that the area near his food bowl is littered with mouse droppings. Grr. Empty the food bowl, get the hoover out. A little while later I spot the mouse. He seems to be making a bolt for the door (good – I can shut it behind him and hopefully he’ll fuck off somewhere else). Instead he disappears through a previously unnoticed hole between the carpet and the drywall. Plug up the hole, reasonably certain he can get through the wall to the crawl space at the back of the house, though not really caring if he can’t. Job done.

Take Tri downstairs in the late evening. Put some food and water down for him. Read for a while. Turn off the light and stretch out in bed with Tri sprawled out beside me. Five minutes later from the area of the food bowl I hear crunch, crunch, crunch. Bollocks. Either Mickey Mouse found his way back in through some other hole or he’d taken up residence with a chum. Fuck.

In the morning I ask Mike if he thinks Arbutus might sell humane mouse traps. He smiles, says he is not only sure they do not, but that they would laugh at me if I asked. Suspect he’s right.

Off to Vancouver to meet up with travelling pal Luna (hurrah!) and do a bit more work on project number two: the transformation of the beige apartment.