Murderer...
In my house, we harbor a killer. A cold blooded murderer without feeling or remorse who revels in each kill...and he cannot be stopped. Even worse, I am an accessory to his crimes. I clean up after him.

Of course I am talking about my cat, Sam. I just came across him in my hallway eating a bird corpse. Poor little bird. Reduced to a pile of flesh and feathers on my carpet, its little life snuffed out by my mass-murderer of a cat. And there I am screaming "Sam, take it outside!", while visions of my baby grabbing a handful of it send me over the edge.

When David is home, the cat dutifully picks up his kill and lets us chase him outside with it. But when David is at work and I am here alone with the baby, Sam likes to have some sport with me too. He moves the bird to another part of the living room, leaving a trail of feathers for me as I do my best to chase him toward the door. Then I get the water bottle and start spraying him to get him to leave. This backfires as he instead abandons the carcass and takes cover. So now I am left to remove the bird myself and clean up all the poor dear's feathers before my 11 month old decides to taste this new toy that has been left in his play space.

I managed to scoop it up on a dust pan all the while chanting "Don't look at it, don't look at it." And "Don't throw up, don't throw up."

A few nights ago it was a mouse. In the middle of the night David and I awoke to hear a high pitched squeaking. David turned on the light and it was once again Charles Manson the cat torturing the poor mouse on the floor next to our bed. I was terrified that Sam was going to bring the mouse onto my bed - a nightmare I have occasionally. And it seems fairly likely to happen when you consider that Sam generally sleeps on the bed near David. Shudder.

This is always a dilemma in my house. What do we do when the poor beast in Sam's mouth is not actually dead. This happens often. Sam likes to bring them into the house broken, but still struggling. David and I are compassionate people and we can't stand to allow the cat to further harm an innocent creature. Especially in our living room. But here is the question. Do we try to get the creature out of Sam's grip? This is difficult to accomplish and the outcome is hazy. The creature is usually dying. So by removing it from the cat and placing it outside, hopefully out of his reach, the animal could presumable die in peace. But what if this prolongs their suffering? And by leaving the cat alone the creature's death would come that much faster. Or worse, you take the animal away from the cat and he doesn't die, but he is so injured that he can't feed himself or run away from the next predator. So we saved him only for him to starve to death or be recaptured and tortured again. I just don't know.

I just wish the cat would not involve us in his hobby. I mean, if he were to simply leave the kills outside, I would never have to interfere...or clean up after him. And really, I am simply terrified that Jackson is going to come upon a carcass first, while I am in the bathroom or something. And I am going to have to deal with the horror of cleaning the blood and feathers off of him. Or shudder, fishing a small mouse out of his mouth. Can you imagine?