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A Game of Cat and Mouse

Real live animals hold a special fascination for babies and small children, a fascination we encourage by providing stuffed toy versions for their amusement and comfort. But even the favorite stuffed-critter doll pales by comparison to the real thing. Emma has always loved her kitty-cat dolls, but she is absolutely infatuated with our cat, 99.

99, named after Secret Agent 99 from "Get Smart," is not what you would call a lovey-dovey cat. She does not wish to be picked up or held in laps, and these wishes are communicated via the international language of pain. She isn't exactly ornery so much as standoffish. She is understated. I know that deep down, she regards me with a special love and devotion, which she regularly expresses by allowing me to put food into her dish.

Some cats are good with children, which means that they will absorb hours of torture before hauling their paunch off the sofa and reeling out to the yard for a nap in the sun. Our friend's cat, Astro, a Persian Boneless, is such a specimen; you have to use both arms when picking him up to keep him from pouring onto the ground. 99 is no such creature. Pick her up and she uses your chest as a launching pad. As we used to say in the 90's, she places a high value on her personal space. Loosely translated, this means that if you touch her at the wrong time she will shred your hand.

Naturally, Emma's enthusiasm to play with the kitty is a cause of concern in this house. Baby-to-cat contact must be limited to a few closely supervised sessions. We used to think that Emma would be safe as long as 99 had an escape route, but all it took was one good handful of kitty ear to blow a big hole in that theory. I saw the whole thing. 99 struck like lightning and was out the door, and I had already swept Emma up into my arms and was cooing to her by the time the pain registered in the forehead area. Judging from her continued interest in the cat, I'd say she still has no idea what happened.

Besides being an emergency room visit waiting to happen, 99 presents another dilemma. Her practice of ritual mouse-killing is exposing Emma to certain grim food chain realities not otherwise covered in the standard infant literature. 99 does not simply kill a mouse; she parades before us while chewing on the struggling wretch and singing a warbling kitty-victory song until we acknowledge her, and it is only then that she gets down to business.

This is probably not news to you cat owners, but mice are very crunchy; if you didn't know better, you might think she was eating a bag of potato chips. There is nothing about this in "Sylvester the Musical Mouse," or in the Beatrix Potter Nursery Rhymes. Even the graphic rodent mutilations of "Three Blind Mice" cannot compare to the spectacle of 99 crushing a mouse's skull in her jaws while we egg her on and Walt Disney turns over in his grave, or his frost-free Amana, or wherever he is.

Of course we encourage her. Mouse eradication is one of the great benefits of cat ownership. Stuffed toys are great but real mice are pests. Mickey Mouse isn't exactly known for tunneling into your kitchen, eating your cereal, and leaving little cartoon mouse droppings in the cupboards.

The downside is that Emma, at one year of age, is already being exposed to life's inconsistencies, which during the teenage years become known as hypocrisy. The upside is that she has learned the zoologically accurate lyric to the verse in "Old MacDonald" wherein "On that farm he had a mouse, E-I-E-I-O:

"With a crunch crunch here and a crunch crunch there, Here a crunch, there a crunch, everywhere a crunch crunch ..."

Meanwhile, her loyal old stuffed Mousie doll sits in the corner saying nothing. Maybe the cat got his tongue.

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© Todd Pinsky 1998-2002. All rights reserved.