Every mouse knows the code. Be invisible if you can. Hide in the nest. Scurry along the wall. Keep your head down. Always look gift cheese in the mouth. Never ever ever associate with Catkind. They have claws that catch and jaws that snatch and teeth that devour and they are the enemies of Mousekind. I know those rules. I was raised in the Code of the Nest.
I am the Worst Mouse in the World.
Because when I was young I discovered that cats are not just claws and teeth and cruelty and pouncing in the dark. Cats are so much more than that—I shudder to admit I have even had these thoughts, these heresies from Mousethink, must less that I believe them. Cats are soft warm fur, they are the deep thrum of a warm soothing purr on a cold snowy day, the warmest, coziest sound in the world that can lull the bravest mouse warrior into the darkness; they are that total boneless relaxation that every species envies—every species in its secret place wants to be a cat, and I especially mean you, dogs. And cats are also—ah, cats are also—great deep complex yellow eyes, eyes the size of oceans, eyes into which any sailor might venture searching for the deep incense and fog of sleep and oblivion and forgetting and obedience, cat’s eyes are bigger than the mouse universe and I have ventured into them, I have let myself drift into the ocean of my cat’s eyes, I have let go of invisibility and fear and timidity and self-preservation, I have left the hole and the wall and the scurry and I have walked straight at the claws because behind them is the deep yellow of the eyes and the seductive hum of the purr and a world in which a mouse can simply cease to exist and become part of a cat, and I have let myself cross the line no mouse should cross.
I am the Worst Mouse in the World.
Each time I find myself—how did I get back here?—back in the nest, I vow to be a good loyal mouse from now on. No more surrender to cats’ tricks, I will scurry and squeak and follow the Mouse Code. But it is too late; the cat owns me, she knows it and somewhere locked in a mental closet where I cannot reach or change it, where I cannot really even look directly at it or think about it, I know that I am a traitor mouse, I am her spy sent to betray my own kind and I know this and don’t care. I am honored to be
The Worst Mouse in the World.
And each time I peek out of the hole and see the cat’s world I vow that this time I will stay clear, I will go no further into treachery; and yet the cat—oh! What a cat she is!—is always too clever for me; She has always some gift, some trap, some game that intrigues me and that draws me in until I am again between her paws—bless my cat! she sheathes her claws around me though she is not above giving me a brisk smack with them to amuse herself and when she does and I roll across the floor squeaking I am delighted and ashamed at how wonderful I feel to be even noticed enough to merit a smack of the paw. But first she must lure me out of the hole, which she does in an infinite variety of ways. Sometimes I peek out of the whole to find her great yellow eye pressed right up against it and when that happens the effect is instantaneous. I am gone. I am out of the hole, I no longer even know that I am a mouse, I become a toy or even a part of her collar, maybe one of those little bells that would give warning of her approach if she hadn’t taken my ability to hear them, I am hers in an instant, I am gone. Other times it suits her to make me face my own weakness more fully—what good is a toy, I think she thinks, if you must always make it come to you? Even though you can always do that, isn’t it boring? And so she lures me instead by ignoring me, curled up in a cozy round sleeping-cat shape with the world’s most melodious purr vibrating the air around her and reaching and entering my eye the way a seductive perfume enters the nostrils, and once I hear it I am like Odysseus hearing the sirens but I am not tied to any mast. The sound is in my ears. If I cover them with my paws, I still can hear it; if it burrow deep in the insulation, I still can hear it; if I chatter and squeak with other mice—mousetalk, you know, such as “You know what I like? Cheese!” “Ooh, yeh, well, you know I really hate traps!” “Oh, yeh, that’s so amazing, I hate traps too!” “Oh, yeh, and I also hate poison pellets,” “Yeh, those are bad.” and squeak squeak squeak blah blah so boring when in my ears I can still hear that hum, that purr, I want to be part of that hum, that deep thrum like an engine at the heart of the world carrying me across the yellow ocean and I think, what do I have to do with these tiny timorous cowering creatures, I would rather be a bell on my cat’s collar than the King of all the mice because I am
The Worst Mouse in the World.
And once the thrum has taken hold, ordering my breathing and my heartbeat, my paws carry me closer and closer until I am nestled against my cat, asleep, no longer a mouse or any separate creature but just a part of her and then when she wakes and traps me with her paws I do not care, and when she fixes me with her eye and asks me to tell her the innermost secrets of the nest I do without a pause, I am a traitor to mousekind. I am
The Worst Mouse in the World.
And today, oh, my cat is clever (remember the ancient Egyptians worshiped the cat-goddess Bastet who gave her name to the city of Bubastis, my cat is Bastet in her heart, she is a goddess, she is above mere men and mere mice). She knows I am sure that she can lure me out by fixing me with her eyes or purring or simply by twitching her tail, I cannot resist. But what is the point of using sure methods when she can make me betray myself completely in a new way that I never imagined? And so today she has stolen her human’s shoes and pulled them across the floor until they rest next to her, the shoes are white, they have high heels but they have a pattern, a gentle flow of waves that spirals around them drawing my eye in and around and around (it must do the same to male humans, I suspect, when the cat’s woman wears them, poor men, they are so lucky that they will lose the battle of the sexes so quickly and decisively) and my eyes follows them around and around until I am dizzy and forgetful and all the world has narrowed to the point of that shoe and I hear her purring and as if a voice is speaking in my head I know that the best place in the world for a tiny mouse to hide would be in that shoe, that no harm could come to me there, I could give up the scurry and worry and just sleep and cease to exist and my paws are carrying me across the floor with no instructions from my brain for it has gone quiet and I can think only of flow and spiral and purr and eyes and I am nestled in the shoe, I am disappearing, and at the top of the shoe I see her deep yellow eye peering at me and I know she has me now where she has wanted me and that my fate is in her paws and my last thought is that I am
The Worst Mouse in the World.
