Sophie's Choice

This is kind of a "girly" post, and well, I'm a girl. Get over it.

Post Katrina, I volunteered at the Austin Humane Society whose staff had traveled to New Orleans and rescued hundreds of stranded animals. While volunteering, of COURSE I had to mosey on over to look at the animals up for adoption. A week later, I welcomed Sophie into my home. I'm not sure if she was a stray resulting from Katrina or not, but now she is one of my girls (I have another cat named Lucy who is certainly worthy of her own post another time). Sophie melts in your arms when you hold her, she doesn't talk much, and when she does it's with the tiniest little voice. She is also the fiercest mouse hunter I've ever seen. So now you're probably thinking "Gross, Shorey has mice in her house. That's disgusting!" Let me set the record straight... Sophie is IN LOVE with these little mouse toys that, unless you know are toys, will completely creep you out if seen from the corner of your eye.

She enjoys these toys, at first tenderly batting them about with her paws, even lounging lovingly with them. Over time, however, the intensity increases and she will wrestle with them day and night, and I can't bear to tear them away from her gripping jaws unless I have a new one lined up. She even growls a little when she's walking around carrying them in her mouth or as she's ripping out their little fabric belllies.

As you can see, these little guys start off just fine, but are quickly reduced to faceless, earless blobs with shredded seams and protruding tufts of cotton. Of course, I have no idea how she'd react to a real mouse. She would probably just go off and hide.