Martin's Mice Read online

  Martin paid no attention to this remark because he was too busy thinking. He had discovered what mice ate, but how could he get hold of some of the stuff? Where was it kept?

  At that very moment he heard footsteps coming down the garden path. The mouse that was eating the rabbit food heard them too and slipped out and away, as Martin went to meet the farmer’s daughter and rubbed himself against her legs.

  They both spoke at once. He heard a babble of sound as she said, “What do you want, kitty?” and she heard a mewing noise as he said, “Where do you keep the rabbit food?”

  But then both questions were answered as the girl bent down and pulled out a large cookie tin from beneath the trestle and took off the lid. She opened one of the hutch doors and reached in to take out a feeding bowl, and while her back was turned, Martin acted.

  Quick as a flash, he shoved his face into the tin and took the biggest mouthful he could manage of the little brown rod-shaped rabbit pellets. Then, slowly so as not to draw attention to himself, he walked away up the path, out of the garden gate, and back into the farmyard.

  Suddenly, to his horror, he saw his mother approaching. What if she should speak to him? He could not reply with his mouth jam-packed with rabbit food. He changed direction, to avoid her, but so did she, to meet him.

  “Martin, my son!” said Dulcie Maude. “I’ve not seen you for ages. How are you getting on? Robin and Lark have become quite expert mousers. How about you? You were always such a fussy eater. Have you caught one yet?”

  Despite his bulging cheeks, Martin somehow managed a kind of strangled purr that must have sounded to Dulcie Maude like a “Yes,” for she said, “Good. Good. You’re looking much fatter in the face, I must say,” and went on her way.

  Martin waited till his mother was out of sight. Then he hurried to the cart-shed and climbed the flight of steps that led to the loft above. He leaped onto the wooden chest beside the bath and with great relief, for his jaws were aching, opened them to drop his burden.

  “Look what I’ve brought you!” he cried with pride, but there was no reply. For a nasty moment Martin thought that his pet mouse had somehow escaped, but then he saw movement in the straw, which had now been neatly woven into a round ball. From a hole in the side of the nest ball a mouse appeared and began to feed hungrily upon the rabbit food.

  But this was surely not his mouse! This was not the fat mouse with the strange name—“I am pregnant,” it had said. But this was a thin mouse!

  “Why,” cried Martin in amazement, “you are not Pregnant!”

  “Too true!” said the mouse, stuffing another rabbit pellet into its mouth and chewing busily.

  “I don’t understand you,” said Martin.

  The mouse regarded him beadily.

  “I don’t understand you,” it said, “but thanks awfully for the grub. And you can have a peep if you like.”

  “A peep?”

  “In the nest. Gently, mind.”

  Carefully, Martin jumped into the bath and scraped away a little of the straw on top of the nest ball.

  Inside it, there were eight blind pink hairless baby mice.

  “Oh!” gasped Martin. “Oh, I say! Aren’t they lovely!”

  “All thanks to you, Martin,” said the mouse. “I’ve heard tell that a cat has nine lives, but you have spared that many—my life and my children’s—and I am truly grateful.”

  “Oh, don’t mention it!” said Martin in a fluster. “Don’t mention it, um, er…”

  “I’m afraid I confused you with regard to my name,” said the mouse. “Actually, it’s Drusilla.”

  “I say, what a jolly name!” said Martin.

  The mouse went on busily eating, and Martin used this as an excuse to address her correctly.

  “Is the food all right, Drusilla?” he said.

  “Scrumptious,” she said.

  “And did I bring enough?”

  “Enough for days!” said Drusilla. “Carried it in your mouth, I imagine?”

  “Yes.”

  Drusilla licked her lips.

  “I don’t like to trouble you, Martin,” she said, “when you’ve been so kind, but I am so terribly, terribly thirsty.”

  “Oh!” said Martin.

  “I think it might be difficult,” said Drusilla, “for you to transport water in the same way. So may I make a suggestion?”

  “Of course, Drusilla,” said Martin.

  “If you were to put your paws in a puddle and then come straight back, there would be plenty of moisture on them. I only need a small amount. If you wouldn’t object?”

  “Of course not, Drusilla,” said Martin. “I’ll go straightaway. I won’t be long.”

  —

  Out in the yard, he looked for puddles, but the weather had been dry and warm and there were none. Martin felt rather relieved. Like all his kind, he hated getting his feet wet. But then he recalled that dear little voice saying, “I am so terribly, terribly thirsty.”

  The cattle trough was full, of course, but Martin was afraid of toppling in, so he made his way down to the duck pond. The water in it looked horribly wet, but Martin took his courage in both paws and gingerly dipped one in. Then cautiously, he waded in, while the ducks burst into fits of quacking laughter.

  At this moment Robin and Lark appeared, walking one behind the other along the top of the wall that bounded the duck pond. They stopped opposite Martin and sat with their paws together and their tails curled neatly around them, looking down at him as he stood ankle deep in the water.

  “Not only a wimp,” said Robin.

  “Not only a fool,” said Lark.

  “But…” they said, and Martin was waiting damply for them to call him what the sheep and the cow and the pig and the rabbits had called him, when there was a sudden loud barking. The farmer’s black-and-white collie loved cat chasing, and Martin waited till his brother and sister had been chased a long way away. Then he waded out of the duck pond and made his way back to his pet. He did not like to go too fast, lest the water on his paws should all be shaken off, nor too slow, so giving it more time to run off, so he walked in a curious way, putting down each foot as carefully as though he were crossing thin ice.

  At last he stood in the bathtub once more and dripped.

  “Oh, cheers, Martin!” cried Drusilla, lapping eagerly at the drops of water as they ran off the kitten’s legs onto the floor of the bathtub.

  Martin jumped out onto the chest and sat cleaning his paws. He looked fondly over the rim at his little mouse, now well supplied with comfortable bedding and food and water, as a pet should be.

  “Kids all right, Drusilla?” he said.

  “Yes, they’re fine, thanks,” said Drusilla. “Everything’s fine really, except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well,” said Drusilla, “let’s get things straight. You’ve made up your mind to keep me a prisoner, haven’t you?”

  “Not a prisoner. A pet. Just like the girl keeps her rabbits.”

  “Okay. I’m not grumbling. I’d much rather be your pet than your breakfast, which is what I would have been if you’d been an ordinary cat. But you know, Martin, pets like those rabbits don’t only need bedding and food and water. There’s something else that the girl has to do for the comfort of those rabbits, regularly.”

  “What’s that, Drusilla?” said Martin.

  “She has to clean them out, Martin. They’re not house-trained, you know. And I,” said Drusilla, “am not bath-trained.”

  4

  Now I’ve got nine!

  “Oh!” said Martin.

  Oh, goodness, he thought, what’s the answer to that?

  Like all his kind, he was by nature particular about these matters. What’s more, Dulcie Maude had given the kittens a thorough toilet training.

  “When you want to go,” she had said, “you find a patch of loose soil and you dig a little hole in it. Then, when you’ve finished, you cover it over with earth. All cats do this.”
r />   But I don’t suppose all mice do, thought Martin, and anyway you can’t dig holes in a tub.

  Then suddenly his eye fell upon the drain plug. What’s under a drain plug? A plug hole! Martin waited until Drusilla was safely back in her nest, nursing the babies, and then he dropped quietly into the tap end of the bath. There was even, he saw, a length of broken chain still attached to the plug, half a dozen little brass links fastened to the circle of soggy brown rubber.

  He took them in his mouth and pulled.

  For an instant Martin caught his breath. The drain hole was quite large enough for a mouse to go down through. Was he simply providing his pet with a way out? But then he peered into it and saw to his relief that it was barred by a little brass grating shaped like a cartwheel. To be sure, there were six holes in the grating, but they were too small for even the new thin Drusilla.

  A means of escape it was not.

  A perfect lavatory it was.

  Just then Martin heard the nest straw rustle and found Drusilla at his elbow. Embarrassed, he wondered how to explain to her his solution to the problem of sanitation, but he need not have worried.

  “Oh, goody!” said Drusilla. “The ladies’ room!”

  —

  Now, as the weeks passed and the mouse cubs grew larger every day, it seemed, everything in the bath was lovely. By the time the cubs were two weeks old they had their teeth, and by three weeks they were keen to use them on solid food. Once they began to come out of the nest, smart in their first coats of silky gray hair, Drusilla set about bath-training them, and Martin set about providing for their healthy young appetites. Early on, Drusilla had explained something to him.

  “What’s ‘omnivorous’?” he had asked her one day.

  “Why?” said Drusilla.

  “Somebody told me that mice are omnivorous,” said Martin.

  “So they are.”

  “But what does it mean?”

  “It means that they eat anything and everything.”

  “Oh,” said Martin.

  “Like men do,” said Drusilla.

  “And pigs.”

  “Yes.”

  So now Martin fed his mice on a wide variety of choice foods. There was plenty to choose from on the farm. He stole dairy feed from the cows, and pig feed from the pigs, and sheep feed from the sheep. He took corn from the chickens and the ducks, and he took the bread crusts that the farmer’s wife put out for the wild birds. A fallen apple that he found in the orchard lasted the family a long time, and, because it was juicy, satisfied their thirsts and saved Martin the need to paddle in the duck pond for a couple of days. Once he even brought a small mouthful of his own canned cat food (liver flavored), but Drusilla was quite sharp with him about that.

  “Use your common sense, Martin,” she said. “The children are much too young for such rich food. It will give them terrible tummy upsets.” And she ate it herself.

  But generally she was all sweetness and light, thanking Martin prettily for everything he brought and encouraging the cubs to do the same.

  “What do you say, children?” she would ask when the kitten appeared with an offering, and eight squeaky little voices would answer, “Thank you, Uncle Martin.”

  Dear little things, thought Martin. Mouse-keeping really is the nicest hobby. And to think that I started with only one and now I’ve got nine! But even as he gazed fondly down at them all, he was dogged by a secret fear. Suppose one of the other cats should ever come up into the loft of the cart-shed? Nine would soon be none.

  At that very moment he heard the scratch of claws on the flight of steps.

  5

  Was it a buck?

  Robin! thought Martin. Or Lark! Or both! It’s all over with my mice once they find them! They mustn’t come up here. I must charge at them and knock them down the steps. It doesn’t matter what they think, I must stop them!

  He jumped off the wooden chest and dashed to the hole in the loft floor where the steps emerged. Climbing them, dimly seen in the gloom of the old windowless cart-shed, was an indistinct cat shape, and with a wild cry of “We’ll see who’s a wimp and a fool!” Martin launched himself at it. Together they tumbled to the floor. The next thing Martin felt was a terrific thump on one ear.

  “You stupid boy!” hissed Dulcie Maude, thumping him on the other one. “Whatever do you think you’re doing?”

  “Oh, sorry, Mother!” gasped Martin. “I didn’t know it was you.”

  “Well, you know now,” said Dulcie Maude, and she gave him a third thump for luck. “Anyway,” she said, “what in the world were you doing up in that loft? There are no mice up there, Martin. You should know by now that mice only live where there is food for them—in the cowsheds and the pigsties and the chicken houses. There’s nothing for them to eat in that old loft, so there won’t be any mice up there, will there?”

  Martin did not reply.

  “I saw you going into the cart-shed,” went on Dulcie Maude, “so I followed you to see what you were up to, and the next thing I know you come hurtling down the steps, yelling some rubbish, and knock your poor old mother flying.”

  “Sorry, Mother,” said Martin again. “I thought you were Robin. Or Lark. Or both. I was just playing. It was a game.”

  “Now look here, Martin,” said Dulcie Maude briskly, “you’re much too old to be playing silly games. Your job is to kill mice. Your brother and sister have got dozens. Why, yesterday they even clobbered a rat between them. So what about you, may I ask? How many mice have you got?”

  “I’ve got nine, Mother,” said Martin.

  “Have you?” said Dulcie Maude. “Have you indeed?”

  Like most mothers after they have walloped their children, she began to feel that maybe she’d been a bit hard on this odd son of hers. Kittens will be kittens, she thought, and she licked his nose.

  “All right, Martin,” she said in a kindly voice, “nine’s not a bad score. But just you remember—you won’t find any mice here.”

  “No, Mother,” said Martin.

  “You won’t find Robin and Lark wasting their time in a place like this.”

  “No, Mother,” said Martin.

  “So don’t waste yours. Be off with you now. A mouse a day,” said Dulcie Maude, “keeps the vet away.”

  “Yes, Mother,” said Martin. “I’ll go and catch one now.”

  “On second thought,” said Dulcie Maude, “I’ll come with you.”

  “Oh,” said Martin. “Oh, there’s no need. I can manage.”

  “I daresay,” said Dulcie Maude. “But I’d like to come along and watch you in action. Just to see if you’re as good as the other two. We’ll go to the chicken house. There are plenty of mice in there.”

  —

  The hens were out foraging in the orchard, so the chicken house was empty except for one broody sitting in a nest, who fluffed her feathers with an angry squawk as the cats came in. Dulcie Maude settled herself comfortably in a patch of sunshine by the open door. Martin crouched beside a mousehole in the far wall. The broody settled. All was quiet.

  For a long time nothing moved. Both cats were still as statues. Only the dust motes danced in the sunlight shaft.

  Dulcie Maude’s eyes closed. She’s asleep, thought Martin. Come out now, little mouse, and I’ll make a move and startle you and then you can run back into your hole and Mother will never know.

  As though it had read his mind, a mouse poked its nose out. Just then a hen came in at the door on its way to lay an egg and woke Dulcie Maude as the mouse scurried out onto the henhouse floor. Martin glanced at his mother out of the corner of his eye. She was watching him.

  I’ll simply have to catch it, Martin thought. If I miss it on purpose, she’ll wallop me for starters and then keep following me around till I do get one.

  He tensed himself and leaped.

  “Good boy!” said Dulcie Maude approvingly.

  She rose and stretched herself.

  “Bring it here,” she said, “I could do with a s
nack.”

  Martin did not move.

  “Martin!” said Dulcie Maude sharply. “Did you hear what I said?”

  Martin did not answer. He crouched, holding the mouse between his forepaws (whose claws he had not unsheathed), and faced his mother. He felt suddenly very angry. First she pokes her nose into my loft, then she beats me up, then she makes me catch a mouse I don’t want to catch, and now she wants it for herself! She shan’t have it!

  He crouched lower, flattening his ears and swishing his tail, and he growled the fiercest growl that he could manage.

  “Well, well, well!” said Dulcie Maude. “How bloodthirsty we’ve grown!” She felt a mixture of maternal pride that the worm had turned and parental anger that it was a disobedient worm.

  Martin growled again.

  “Oh, keep your rotten mouse,” said Dulcie Maude sniffily, and she turned and walked out of the chicken house.

  Martin watched through the door till his mother was out of sight. Then he opened his paws.

  “Scat!” he said.

  “Scat?” said the mouse in a feeble voice.

  “Yes,” said Martin. “Make tracks! Beat it! Shove off! Scram!”

  Dazedly the mouse got to its feet and staggered to its hole and crawled in.

  “Was it a buck?” asked Drusilla when Martin told her the story later.

  “A buck?”

  “A male mouse. Male mice are bucks; females like me are does.”

  “I haven’t a clue,” said Martin. “I didn’t ask. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing,” said Drusilla. “I just wondered.”

  6

  It’s boring!

  Martin was curious. Why did it matter to Drusilla whether the mouse that he had caught was male or female? He thought about it for a while and then he said, “I think I’ve got it, Drusilla. If it had been a female, a doe, I mean, like you, you might have been pleased if I’d brought it home and then you could have had a friend?”