Good Morning!

Normally, Zane is thrown out of the house every night. It's gotten to be my little ritual - I go turn off the generator, poke around outside for a while (the air is always so cool and quiet at night!), get ready for bed, poke around some more, do some blogging and reading... and then, just before I'm about to nod off, I wake the cat up from his slumber, chuck him out the door and lock everything up for the night.

Last night, though, as I was doing my reading, the cat came under my mosquito net and patiently waited while I folded up his little mat at the end of the bed, and he was just being so cute... so I let him sleep at the foot of my bed, instead of throwing him out to the mercy of the wilds. Plus, I was feeling a bit bad because the night before, he had had some kind of accident - obviously he couldn't tell me what happened, but he came home in the morning all covered in mud, limping, and looking rather forlorn. Something must have been seriously wrong with him, because he let me give him a rub down with a very wet rag, which I did to make sure he wasn't bleeding or anything. Which he wasn't. So I figure he must have fallen out of a tree or something.

Anyways, I let Zane sleep in my little mosquito net cocoon with me last night. But he woke me up at about 6 am with a bit of a scruffle under my bed. I thought at first he was just trying to wake me up so I could let him outside to go pee or something. So I got out my headlamp and was able to step down out of my bed... when I saw what the real scruffle was about. Zane was busy batting around a little rat carcass! He just looked at me proudly and seemed to say, "Good morning!". Ew. I didn't want to deal with anything... and well, quite frankly, Zane is normally a very clean eater. So I planned to just let him sit there and munch on his breakfast, thinking that by the time I woke up again a while later, all remains of the rat would be gone.

So I closed my eyes and went back to sleep. Then I heard a funny slap, slap, scruffle, boof. And a little scampering. And then the same thing again. Then I felt something hit my bed. And more scruffling.

I somehow didn't want to know what was happening, but I just couldn't help myself... so I turned on my headlamp again, just in time to see Zane grab the rat in his mouth, throw him up in the air, and swat at him like he was serving a tennis ball! Now this I just couldn't deal with - I knew I'd never get back to sleep with the thought of a dead rat being batted around my bedroom in the dark!

So I got out of bed, carefully avoiding Zane and the rat. As soon as Zane saw me coming, he grabbed the rat in his mouth and started growling at me - I'm sure he thought I was going to steal his breakfast!

I got to my bedroom door, opened it, then went to open all the other doors to the outside so I could chase Zane out, hopefully while he still had the rat in his mouth.

And sure enough, Zane was smart enough to know exactly where I wanted him to go - so he happily ran into the yard with his big breakfast. Yum yum. As for me, I locked the doors all up again, and went back to sleep - but still thinking about all the other little rats that are probably still lurking under my bed...