The best laid schemes o' mice and ... cats ...

This little guy (girl?) started off my Saturday morning. Well, technically, being awakened at 7:00 AM to the sound of scratching and growling was the start of the adventure. I know the sounds for exactly what they are because I've had many a mouse adventure in my house. 

I live out in the boon-docks and a mouse in the house in the winter months is not an out of the ordinary occurrence. This one at least had the decency to get the party started at a reasonable hour. Several years ago I had a mouse adventure at 3:00AM which ended with me standing out in my back yard, stark naked and freezing, with a mouse in a jar and a really pissed off, fat orange cat named Creature glaring at me through the window as if I had just single-handedly destroyed the world as we knew it. Ain't life grand?

Anyway, the growling I woke up to this morning was Zipper, the Mouse Warrior ...

The scratching was Tuck, the Guardian of the Realm ...

When it comes to mouse visitors, these boys are on it like white on rice. As a rule, Tuck has an incredibly sensitive nose for smelling a mouse in the house. But, well, he's not so fast on the catching part. Zipper, on the other hand, is like greased lightening on the catch, but not so much on the ball in realizing the mouse is even in the house - at least not until Tuck flushes the poor thing out into the open and starts the chase. These two would probably fair okay as tag-team wrestlers.

I have two large paintings propped against the wall in the bedroom that I haven't found places to hang yet. Now, where the mouse first came in from I don't know. What I do know is his wee self was squeezed in between these two paintings and the cats had him surrounded. Zip on one end, growling. Tuck on the other, poking his paw between the frames and scratching the glass. "Caught between rock and a hard place" probably doesn't even begin to describe what that poor mouse was thinking.

Unlike a lot of people, mice don't freak me out. I don't jump up in a chair and wail like a lunatic when confronted with a mouse situation. Nor do I start swinging a broom at everything. I stay pretty calm. Actually, I had pet mice when I was a kid. The difference between the pet mice and a wild mouse is the proclivity of the latter to bite when scared, caught or handled. Mice = okay. Bite = not okay. I think it could go without saying this mouse visitor was scared. Given that, I threw on my sweatpants, sweatshirt, and boots. Something about being bitten on the toes does give me a slight case of the willies.

Next is to get a wide-mouthed Mason jar for catching. I've learned from numerous past experiences this is the best. The hardest part is keeping the cats at bay long enough to get the mouse into the jar. I've had to pry a mouse from cat jaws on more than one occasion and I don't like that. Thing is, I don't want the mouse to get hurt. It's bad enough that I have to take it outside into the cold, it being scared as all get-out, and set it out in the woods away from the house. I always think about how that would make me feel if I were the mouse .... cold, lost, deathly afraid and all alone. It just sucks. Of course, even though I do, the mouse doesn't realize the alternative is a Hell of a lot worse.

When I set that mouse out this morning onto a pile of logs beside my driveway he did an amazing thing ... he ran forward like a flash to the next log, but then suddenly stopped and looked at me. Sat perfectly still, turned his little head and looked right at me. All I could do was look back at that cute little face and feel honored.

All right, that might sounds nuts to some people, but to others, they know exactly what I mean. Mouse is one of the creatures in my personal Animal Totem Guides. Animals share this Earth with us, playing their parts in the grand design of life. Provided they aren't invaded, destroyed, and abused by the human population of the planet, they live in harmony with the environment. We humans have evolved to live in a manner that I believe is in utter dis-harmony with our environment. When we stop and see with both our hearts as well as our eyes, the animals can teach us much deeply valuable wisdom for living a life of harmony.

In the Native American culture the humble mouse 'medicine' teaches lessons hundreds of times its size. This is a brief synopsis of that medicine ...

 Mouse medicine is both a great power
and a great weakness.
It is good to pay attention to all details,
but bad to over-analyze every little thing.

Mouse people can be fixated on methodology and appear to be nit-pickers.
They will make the simplest task fraught with difficulty.
Everything must be in order in a Mouse's house.

Often, Mouse people are fearful of life.
You should try to see the larger picture
Even if you live in a small house in Los Angeles,
you are also part of the Earth, galaxy and universe.

If a Mouse totem has recently entered your life,
ask yourself if you have neglected the trivial but necessary things in life.
Have you become too focused on one or two activities
and neglecting opportunities around you?
Or are you trying to do too many things at the same time?

Mouse medicine can show how to focus
and how to attain the big things by working on the little things.

*********************************

So what I take from this morning's mouse adventure is that I have a job of needing to refocus my life. I have indeed been too consumed with a few things that I need to re-prioritize in importance to be able to give my best to them. I am indeed trying to do too many things at once, and getting very little productive work done on any of them because I've been too scattered. I've also been too analytical about some other things that I would be better served to just hand over in faith to a higher power to deal with.

Yep, tiny visitor really got my attention. Thanks Little Mouse!

Namaste', y'all ...

Carol