March -- and the snow still gleaming like a demon that is preening

The mouse tunnels under the snow have glazed floors and walls from five solid months of winter. Halibut's domain is a cold, dark cave, but enough is enough. Sparrows are dropping like icicles.

Only the magpie prospers. The other day I saw a smug one in the spruce tree. I thought he had a twig in his loathsome bill. Building, I thought, for a fresh shipment of tender nestlings.

Then I saw the dangling legs, the tail of a chickadee.

You know the End Days are near when fish fly in the air, carts pull horses, and the prey gets uppity.

Just another Aeluroid lowering around

All around are enemies. No matter if the day is bright, the snow gleaming. They are there, just behind the fence, waiting and watching.

But I too know how to watch and wait. My huge brain, moreover, stuffed tight into the small space of my feloid skull, bursts with cunning and malicious patience. Forget the failed schemes to bring health, sanity, and culture to the stupid masses. My specialty is killing stuff.

Did you know that the mongoose and the hyena belong to my superfamily? How about yours? Any killers in your family?

Me?

Fishmongering

Is your brain not big enough, Halibut?

For its brain-and-agility embiggening effects, I have embarked on a week of eating fish. And where might you catch fish, Halibut? At the bottom of the garden? Under the hedge, perhaps? Maybe fishlings cavort with the elusive mouse under the deck.

I confess that these are not wild, claw-caught fishes. In fact, I have been purloining from the humans who have some source of their own. If the local birdbath had inhabitants other than mosquito larvae, I could ask Gooney and Bhiksu for tribute. Why should they not use their unusual webbed feet for a change?

The fare is, I admit, a little bland, if maddeningly healthful. So I have developed some excellent recipes. Here is one:

1. Open the fridge with your paw and remove a filet from its wrapping of waxed paper. Feel free to tear the paper ad lib.
2. Drag into a corner of your cave.
3. Roll well in mouse droppings.
4. Serve at once.

Since all of my entrepreneurial offerings have met with resolute lack of taste and interest, I am loathe to consider re-opening Halibut's Fish Restaurant. But a private dining club perhaps?

Mouse on Deck

I should say that the mouse is climbing on, up, and under the deck. To give Gooney his due, he sat under the steps for a very long time. It was hot. I pointed out to him that his gently swishing tail was giving him away as he he was sitting on a bed of dry, crunchy leaves.

It may be that G is of a mind to take up his apprenticeship once again. I shall advise him later on the stupidity of mice. (Contra the besotted video of my previous posting.) Mouse may not understand that the wooden latticework which keeps large bodies from under the deck nonetheless allows the Goon a certain reach of paw and talons.

And Delicate says that Halibut is a pessimist. Nonsense: it is optimism that is the last, best vice of the leaders of the animal world. No matter how scarce the prey, how dim the predator, we hope for blood.

World's smartest and most agile mouse, you say?

Why are we all demotivated? Look at THIS.

Mouse dressage. It's obscene.

Rivals

It is already May in the great grey city, and I do not think the crab tree will bloom this year. It sprouted a little thin mouse a few weeks ago, but I have not seen him lately. Maybe Orange Charlie got him. I doubt that Little G did: he disappoints me.

The prey seems to disappear fast, and yet the cats are lazy. If you ask me, it's the Corvids moving in. I saw a big, black one up on the roofline, shuffling uneasily, humping his glossy shoulders. Down below, a magpie tore at the skin of a baby hare. Where did he find the nest? Could it be that I am losing my touch?

Poms

In a quiet house, Gooney and Bhiksu found a dusty, blue pompom. It did not realize that its days of peace and safety were over. When the humans returned, they fished out one of the favoured yellow ones. Gooney made them smile as he pranced and leapt like Barishnikov.

The prancing cat Gooney is no Prince Siegfried.

He skidded across the kitchen floor and ended up in front of the small dark passage beside the dishwasher. Extending his hairy white arms into the gap, he flopped his hindquarters in an unseemly imitation of a flat fish like this one.

Bhiksu can make all the excuses he wants. It's not good practice for mice. It made me grind my teeth.