Poem: Field Mouse

An unsuspecting, little, field mouse
committed a simple mistake one day;
it unwittingly entered my rented house,
not knowing my cats wanted to play.

My feline buddies, Hijinx and Mischief,
decided to live up to their spirited names;
sadly, the field mouse was offered no relief –
for the boys had a live prize to claim.

By its tail, my cats had live entertainment;
although they’re allowed to have their fun,
from this one deed, my cats will never repent;
for they again had disobeyed - rule number one.

Since their English is not very good,
their one restriction they tend to forget;
so it’s not surprising they misunderstood,
my rule of: “Pets are not allowed to have pets!”

So now it was time for me to intervene;
performing an unexpected “Animal Rescue”,
I now became a mouse catching machine
and watched him scamper away from my view.

A new retrieval approach, I had to posit;
with the boys closely monitoring my work,
I quickly chased him into a nearby closet,
hoping my cats wouldn’t impatiently go berserk.

Removing items from the closet’s floor,
and contending with this fuzzy foreigner,
I eyed the boys – to keep him from being gored.
Eventually, I trapped him in the corner.

By the time I reached him, he had died –
traumatized until his last heart’s rush.
Unlike my curious pets, I became teary eyed,
as this escapade ended… with a toilet’s flush. 

P.S. This based on a real event, that occurred when I was renting a small home in New Jersey.

-Joe Breunig

January/February 2012