At 4AM this morning when I went to take my evening stroll to the kitchen to check the premises for mouse attacks I found just what I had hoped might happen. The cat, Thumper, was excitedly pacing in the kitchen looking for signs of where the mice might have been. While the stove had some droppings on it from a successful mouse party I also noticed that Thumper was drawn towards a hole near the cupboards across the room near the back stairwell. On inspection I also found a mouse dropping there. I think Thumper is quite happy to now know that she has a purpose in the apartment. Nothing satisfies the mind more than the challenge stress of having a purpose that you are ideally suited for so I think that Thumper is continuing to have a happy stay at the Housman residence. I have new found respect for the cat through this mouse experience. I can see why the Egyptians would worship and mummify cats. They are very useful animals if you are besieged by mice.

Sarah and I cruised through the first season of Lost the past week and a half. Those people have some external driving force that brought them to the island. That is one of the things that makes the story line interesting. So Thumper is Lost here in Brookline and the reason is that the apartment needs to protect itself from mice.

Yesterday we finally watched the six hour extended edition of Return of the King. We had intended to watch it during Sarah's labor but we had very incorrect expectations of what the labor would be like. As I was watching Return of the King I was noticing how Tolkein was very into this concept of every person/thing being tied together in fate whether it was a good thing or a bad thing. For example, when Frodo is about to throw the ring into the fires of Mordor he becomes obsessed with the ring and is about to leave with it when Golem bites his finger off to steal the ring. While Golem is bad, the ring would never get thrown into the fire if Frodo wasn't freed from it by Golem since he became lucid enough only after the ring was removed from his finger.

The only major issue we seem to be having with the mouse hunt is that Thumper's collar includes a bell that may detract from her ability to hunt the mice. A cat has a silent approach and the bell can only be designed to interfere with the silent stalking of the cat. I tried to remove the bell but it is integrated into the collar that she is wearing and it didn't look like a good idea to remove the whole collar. Cat collars are more binding than dog collars since cats are probably smart enough to take off a simple collar.