The Adventures of Elliot and Dad.

Oh, how I couldn't wait to post this one. Then, I thought, "Oh no, people will be really grossed out and no one will ever want to visit us..." But the story is just too good, so please, I'm sorry if I give you the willies. Be forewarned.

I came home from work today, with the typical conversation with Pat about how Elliot ate, slept, etc. Then, Pat says to me, "So, we had a great adventure today. The three of us, that is..." He had already told me that he took Elliot down to the South Shore Cultural Center to do some research for a paper he's writing. Ok, that was the adventure, right? "Nope, the three of us went down." Three? Huh? I guessed the cat, and yep, the cat was involved, but the cat was not the third traveler... Oh my.

To start, our condo buildings have had a somewhat recent issue with mice. That's the gross part. We've not had any, until, apparently, today. Yuck. I was jumping up and down in the hallway with the willies. This is how the rest went down, I'm told...

The white cat caught a mouse. She brought it into the dining room while Pat was feeding Elliot lunch in the highchair. Pat didn't realize why the cat was going so crazy, running in circles, until he saw the mouse's tail sticking out from under this tunnel thingy we have for Elliot to play in (can you say DISINFECT EVERYTHING?!). Pat is in shock, but is obviously, in true-Pat-style, super intrigued. Mouse is not dead. At all. It makes a run for the nearest corner/furniture to dive behind but the cat gets it again. This cat-and-mouse game (ha, I couldn't resist) continues for a few rounds while Pat tries to figure out how to catch the darn thing before it dives into any of the multiple cracks and crannies in this ol' place.

The mouse escapes behind our buffet. Pat moves the buffet out enough so the cat can get back there and voila, it's caught again. Pat gets an organizing basket from the pantry and traps it under the basket, putting a dining room chair leg on top, creating a mini-jail for the varmint. He then proceeds to get a Ragu jar out of the recycling bin, pokes holes in the top, creates a tunnel out of a magazine for it to travel from the mini-jail into the new glass house... now, Mr. Mouse is on display on the dining room table, in a jar, while Elliot eats his lunch. "Elliot loved watching it, pointing at it!" was Pat's comment. At this point in the story, I've not closed my jaw yet.

"Did you kill it then?!" I don't really ask, but insist.

"Aw, but it was so cute, and what was I going to do, bludgeon its head in?"

"Yea, that's what you do. You kill it," this farm-girl says.

"I couldn't. So we let it lose at the Cultural Center, out by the lake."

"You took it to the Cultural Center with you!?" That means, it went on the city bus, in the jar, in the bottom of Elliot's carrier backpack. Really.

"Yea, well, it went to the library with us first." And, of course, he took pictures of the mouse in the Ragu jar to show me.

"So, does this mean we have to eventually get a hamster for the little guy?"

"I actually thought maybe we should keep it. Not really, but it crossed my mind. It was so cute there, in the jar. I mean, it worked out really well for it to hang out in there for the few hours until we left."

And thus, another chapter in The Adventures of Elliot and Dad comes to a close.