In Which I Consider Cats And Reveal Myself To Be Completely Insane

Last night I stayed in. My housemates were out, so I lounged around watching television and eating toast. When I watch television alone I invariably talk to the characters and join in with the dialogue, or (and this particularly applies when viewing something like CSI: Miami) (not that I would watch that, of course, I only ever watch improving documentaries) filling in the sound track with an exaggerated "dun-dun-DUN!" when a discovery is made. (Usually in CSI the discovery has something to do with the striations on the bullet. Not that I would know.)

(Actually my general rule is: the more I have to suspend my disbelief to get into something, the more I enjoy it. I love Charmed, because it is totally implausible that people can look that immaculate all the time, particularly when fighting scary and often laughable monsters. Also I like the peppy lines and girl power. Reality television is my nemesis.)

After a small television marathon which in NO WAY involved crying at Desperate Housewives, I wandered upstairs and plugged my microphone in to do a bit of aimless singing. Record, listen. Re-record, re-listen. Stare at wall. Re-record. Re-listen. Gaze vacantly at floor.

It was then, mid-vacant floor-gaze, that it happened.

A furry little blur whipped scratchily across the floor boards, a pointy tail streaming out behind. Scrape-scrapey-scrape went its tiny little claws of death as it flew behind the desk and out of sight.

I froze. Microphone in hand I stood, nausea washing over me. Then, in a single gravity-defying bound I sprang onto my bed and began to scream. There was nobody around to rush over dramatically and ask me what the matter was, but nevertheless I screamed. I dropped the mic and began a bizarre dance of twisting and writhing, convinced as I was that the mouse had pursued me in my anguished leap, and was now somehow On Me.

I spent at least half a minute engaging in this ridiculous charade before I managed to calm down. Then I immediately remembered the whip-scratchiness and screamed a little more. I then knew I must act or the insanity would no doubt grip me forever.

I looked at the time. Nearly midnight. I needed to call someone about this, but the person I really wanted to call was, I knew, busy. I had a little think, and called my sister, Alex. To my immense relief, she picked up.

"Hi, Laine? Are you ok?"

"No! Well. Yes. I mean, I'm not dead. But! I just! A! Mouse! Saw one! In my room! I don't know what to do! A mouse in my room! I feel like it's on me! Is it on me? Is it? On me?"

There was a pause.

"A mouse?"

"Yes! I know it sounds...well... I know. But it was in my room!"

Another pause, and a barely audible sigh.

"Alright, you're going to have to give me a minute to take this seriously."

Pause. Deep breath.

"OK. What happened?"

We discussed the events, with me taking breaks every so often so I could flip out about a bit of paper touching my foot, or my hair touching my arm, or some air touching my face.

The main source of my panic was the possibility of it somehow getting in my hair, a situation well-documented by the lovely Nutty Cow a while back. Alex told me in soothing tones that a mouse wouldn't want to be in my hair ("there's no food in there, is there?") (answer: probably not) and reassured me that the risk of it "sneaking back in the middle of the night to get me" was fairly unlikely as well. I knew for a fact, however, that if I woke up and it was on me I would die. Literally and completely die. Then it get a load of mouse-pals together and have a big corpse eating party, which would be only partially ruined by the look of abject terror on my cold, dead face.

(Alright, maybe I had been watching CSI.)

After we put the phone down I gingerly edged myself to the side of the bed and reached for my gym trainers. After shaking them to evacuate any refugee mouse families that could be lurking within, I put them on and tied them up tight.

Stamping was, as far as I could see, the only answer. The floorboards in my room have big gaps between them so there was no way of stopping up the holes, so the only tool I had was stamping (the vibrations, I was certain, would intimidate the rodents and assure them that I was not to be toyed with). Around my room I went, crossly moving things and stamping at furniture. At one point I went and got the hoover, although I'm still unsure as to quite what I planned to do with it. There is no way I would be able to get close enough to a mouse to suck it up a hoover spout (possibly not the right word), and even if I could then the noise of it (I imagine it would be a scrabbling, then a whooshing, some squeaking and then a dull thud) would almost certainly send me into a horrified coma.

At one point in my stamping crusade I began to talk to the mice, as if they were characters on a bad American television programme. Telling them to stay under the floorboards, attempting to incite in them a sense of respect for my deep-seated (and, as by now I was beginning to suspect, not hugely rational) fear of their mousey little ways. This went on for a while before I picked up my microphone and hit record.

And that is the story of how the first whole song I have written in about three months came to be about a mouse. I also may or may not have rhymed "mouse" with "house", with flagrant disregard for most of the rules of good lyric-writing.

I really hope that if it is a big hit I won't start receiving demands for royalty payments in the form of huge wheels of cheese. Perhaps I will get a cat.