The Mousie Getter-Outer

The new table arrived this morning. WOOHOO!



It's a solid oak celebration of circles. Ain't she a beauty?

I love it. I really do. I have a confession to make though. When the delivery men arrived and set it up, they handed me a form where I had to sign that I'd inspected the table and found no damage. As I walked around and around the table, looking for damage, a thought popped into my head.

"I'm going to need the mousie getter-outer"

When Winter was a kitten, he found great joy in shoving things into small spaces. He particularly enjoyed shoving things in the 1" space between the floor and the bottom of my sofa. Anything that he could get his paws on, from anywhere in the apartment (and then house).

Cat toys, kitchen utensils, hair clips, pens... Whatever he could find - and believe me there was a lot, because the bugger figured out how to open the drawers in our first two homes - he'd carry it over to the couch, drop it onto the floor, and then shove it into the crevice between couch and floor.

The only problem was, he always felt immediate remorse after shoving his toys under the couch. After all, he couldn't play with them when they were under the couch. So, he'd then begin to start swiping under the couch (and shoving things deeper), looking under the couch and crying pitifully for me to come rescue his toys. And the crying would go on, and on, and on.

The couch being so close to the ground, I couldn't reach under and retrieve anything, so I at first I moved the couch around a lot to perform the rescues. Eventually, I got smart, and started to use an old tension rod that used to hang curtains in one of my many former homes. It was about the width of the couch, and just barely fit underneath. I'd shove it underneath the couch, sweep it from side to side and in doing so, rescued the toys (and everything else). That tension rod was put to use multiple times, every single day; and it wasn't long before it was christened the Mousie Getter Outer.

I think Winter was about 5 years old before he got over this hangup of shoving things under the couch. Without really noticing, I used the Mousie Getter Outer less and less, and then I eventually put it away; and then I forgot about it.

Until today. The base of that table sits on three little ball feet. It's a couple of inches off the floor, and it occurs to me that the space underneath of it could very well make a popular hangout for cat toys.