Paradoxically Yours...

Mouse Lore

(prompt: 'game' 10/11/2017)

'All hope abandon ye who enter here', were Dante Alighieri's actual words in the early 1300's, in his Divine Comedy - Inferno (that contains everything you always wanted to know about Hell, but were afraid to ask).

Seven centuries later, Granny Mouse was telling a true life story about abandonment of hope as a deep and meaningful story of warning to her small descendants. She had considered it as a bedtime story, but rejected the idea, knowing it would inspire the worst of nightmares in lieu of the desired sweetest of dreams.

"Once upon a very long time ago," she began. All the little mousies giggled. Gran always started her bestiest stories with those words. The grandies wriggled closer to each other in cheerful anticipation. The way Gran dropped her chin and peeked over the top of her specs, and the frown they could glimpse behind her fringe showed a story of substance was coming, but the babes didn't mind. Any story from Gran would be a 'bewdy mate' sort of yarn. It went without saying in their Aussie corner of the world.

"... I ventured out from behind the Giants' freezer to have a quick peek in the cats' food bowl!" And Gran saw, by the hugely widened eyes in front of her, she had suitably impressed her young audience. So much for modern know-how, she thought.

"I know. I shouldn't have done it. But sometimes, when we're younger, we allow hunger to overcome common sense. Remember, I did say it was a 'long time ago'!" Small heads shook slowly and sadly from side to side, as if saying they would never be guilty of such as this.

"And our greatest enemy, that furry called Missy was waiting - up on top of the freezer where I couldn't see or smell her. And she dropped, like a hailstone from the clouds... and she had me—" A horrified gasp from her audience stopped Gran in the midst of reliving the horror and pain of those teeth closing around her, but quick as the quiver of a bee's whisker, she continued. Her warning was far too important to be waylaid by panicky reactions. "First her claws, and then in an instant, her teeth held me captive. " And she ignored the "Oo-o-o-o-o-o" issuing from little mouths now as wide open as the eyes staring fearfully at her.

"Luckily for me, that fearsome Missy cat was not hungry - as I would have discovered if I'd made it to her bowl. So she played with me. A miserable and terrifying game of 'Cat and Mouse'... that's what they call it. And now I know why— "

"Yep, I 'get' that Gran, but what was lucky?" Trust that little monkey Mortimer to pipe up and interrupt... AGAIN!

"Because, she let me go, just to run a short way before another capture - and another - and another! The luckiest bit was that she didn't realise how close we were to the freezer. Before she knew what was what, I'd scurried behind it in a tiny space she couldn't put more than half her nose."

There was a collective sigh from her small audience, except for Mortimer, who once again had to speak out.

"Gran? Is that a table manners rule for that yucky Missy, too? Like - 'Don't play with your food'?"