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Furious as I was, I had no heart for setting mousetraps.

Cleaning the drawer, I scrubbed with SOS soap pads and bleach water until the paint came off in places. The area under the sink received the same punishing wash down. Oddly enough, none of the cereal boxes had been chewed, nor could I find any other foods which had their containers breached. The only item drawing the mouse's attention was the Mr. Clean magic sponges, sponges made up almost entirely of cleaning product. As they were used, they melted away because they contained little if any actual sponge. These had been mouse-mauled thoroughly.

"Aha, maybe he ate a lethal dosage!" The thought brought a wicked smile to my lips. "Just in case, however, I should prepare to catch the gray nibbler.

Bruce arrived home from a dental visit, left side of his lip listing downward from the xylocaine.

"We have a mouse! In this house! In this kitchen! In my life! Destroy him!"

"Whaf duh youf wan me ta du?" That listing lip wasn't helping his speech at all, but I managed to understand him.

"Do? Kill it, of course. What else is there to do?"

"Well, we cout ge a non-lefal twap, or we can ge a neck-bweaker or a steecky twap. Which du yu wan?"

"If I'm here, get a sticky trap or a box. Can't stand to see the beggar hurt although he almost gave me heart failure this morning. BUT, if I can stay at a hotel for a couple of days, break his neck! That way I don't have to see it and I know he won't be back! If we use the others, we have to drive miles out of town to drop him at somebody else's house and gas costs a fortune!"

"Yew arn stayin at a hotel, so I'll ge a steecky twap." He left for the store.

Before Pepe retired, I never had a mouse in any of our houses. He was ruthless in his foraging for the gray shadows. Every day, he presented us with a trophy from his night hunts. But this past year had hit him hard. The slender gray and white body had become a skeletal wraith haunting the rooms, but mainly enjoying the sun's warmth on our screened porch.

The following morning, I rose and stumbled through the living room to the kitchen. My faithful cat was laying stretched across the front of a closet door, snoring. Balanced precariously on his bony spine was about four inches (not counting the tail) of face-washing mouse. The cat felt, heard, smelled nothing. His sunken sides barely rose from breathing.

Tiptoeing toward the animals, I looked for a weapon to kill the beast and found a rolled up newspaper. The possibility of getting close enough

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