What a start to the day (and bonus "What a year!")

[mousme]

The cats mutilated a mouse just before I got out of bed today. At least two broken legs, bleeding from the nose. I would make a terrible hunter, because apparently I don't have it in me to break its neck or crush its skull to put it out of its misery faster. I've put mousie outside in the snow, where I'm hoping shock and hypothermia will give it a quiet end. The cats are all freaking out next to the fridge, so I suspect that more mice have moved in due to the very cold weather we've had on and off (today promises to be warmer, and I'm hoping the presence of murderous cats will convince the family of mice to move to safer quarters).

I had to let the dog out to pee, too, and he's got such a strong prey drive that it took every ounce of training we had for him to obey "Laisse le!" ("Leave it!") Mice are a huge temptation, I do get that, and all my beasts have a strong prey drive. Ben and Maggie were outdoor cats before, and both were Mighty Hunters, and last year Octavia was the one to catch all the mice. I suspect Octavia caught this one, and Ben did the damage. Last year Octavia merely played with the mice and got them very damp, whereas I think Ben had to live by his wits when he was with his previously neglectful family.

I've had to deal with dead, eviscerated voles before, and with live mice, but never before one that was so obviously critically injured, and I'm a little disappointed that I'm so squeamish about performing what would essentially be an act of mercy. (The dog is clamouring to go out again, and all the cats are pressed up against the window, even though the mouse is way out of sight. Good Lord. "I KNOW IT'S OUT THERE, LET ME AT IT!") I have to get on with my day, though, and try not to feel too guilty about the poor mouse. I've had to put Sergent in the bedroom to cool his heels until the memory of mousie has faded a bit, together with his favourite toys so he'll be occupied. I hope.


In other news, everyone is dying this year. Brian Bedford, Alan Rickman, David Bowie, Prince, Mohamed Ali, Gene Wilder, Florence Henderson, Anton Yelchin, John Glenn, Alan Thicke, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and now George Michael. I'm sure I've forgotten a bunch. Not to mention Carrie Fisher's massive heart attack, from which no one is sure she'll recover. Though if anyone can give 2016 the finger, it's our General.

Someone on Twitter summed up this year nicely:

So. 2016, a summary:
Death.
Death.
Death.
Brexit.
Death.
Death.
President Trump.
Death.
Death.
Christm...Nope. Death.

— B52 | @saltwateritch (@Bristol52) December 25, 2016

And honestly, it doesn't feel like 2017 is going to be much better. There may be fewer celebrity deaths, but a Trump presidency bodes ill for all of us. Oh, and that reminds me, though it's less likely to be the case on LJ: if any of you, my US friends, feel that you can't stay safe where you are (due to colour, religion, gender identity, sexual identity, etc.), I have room in my house for you. All we have to do is get you to the border, and after that you can stay with me. We'll figure out how to keep you in a safe haven. At this point, I'm seriously trying to work out how the hell to build the equivalent of an Underground Railroad, in case Trump and his cronies decide that the equivalent of concentration camps or indentured servitude or extended jail time need to be a thing in the US. If it's not needed, so much the better, but better safe than sorry, as far as I'm concerned.

(Yes, I work for the government, and yes, I know some of you work for your governments as well, but that doesn't mean we can ignore illegal or unethical orders. In fact, it is our duty to do so. Nor can we ignore people in distress.)

From a personal standpoint, 2016 was a bit of a mixed bag. I might go into it in another post, because I don't want to derail this one completely. It would take a much longer text to get through it all, and I feel that that might be better as a "recap of the year" type of post, rather than just a complaint about all the celebrity deaths and Trump's new administration.

On the plus side, so far Christmas has been kind to me. I've put up a tree, which the cats, weirdly, are ignoring entirely. Clearly, Christmas ornaments just aren't as interesting as live mice. It was a bit of an adventure, as first of all the place I went to no longer had any small trees, so I am now boasting an eight-foot tree, which I had to cut down a bit because my ceilings are not high enough to accommodate eight feet of tree plus a stand. I have a special stand that I bought years ago at Canadian Tire, which balances your tree by itself so that perpetually single people like me can put up a tree on their own. It still works well after all these years, and after being left outside for two years in the rain and the snow (because I'm a careless person, sometimes).

Second, I had trouble with the tree lights. I bought a second strand (because eight foot tree), and wound it first around the tree. I was talking to my mother on the phone, and accidentally unplugged the power supply while I was trying to light the strand. Oops. Then when I got her back on the line I dropped the phone again, so we decided to call it there rather than invite further problems.

That's when I discovered that my first strand had a neutral prong that was bigger than the hot prong (which is how most are made these days), while the new strand had equal sized prongs, which made them incompatible. No worries, I thought, I would simply switch them around and plus the new strand into the old strand instead of vice versa. No dice. The old strand only had half the lights working. Since these are LED strands, I don't think it's a question of one light being burnt out (the way they used to: I have memories of exasperatedly switching out one bulb after the other to determine which was the defective one, and sometimes it was two bulbs and then you were screwed), so I had to go out and get more strands. I got two to be on the safe side, so now I have a very lit tree. No complaints, tbh. I didn't even have to use the extension cord I got.

After that, thank goodness, the rest of the tree decorating went without a hitch. I had to split it over two days, as I was working early in the morning (for those of you who are relatively new to this LJ, I have to get up at 04:00 to get to work on time), so I ended up finishing it on Christmas Eve. I had on the traditional Christmas music CD that my father gave to him (classical choir music, I should specify), and all in all it was a lovely and peaceful experience. Las year and the year before I had no tree. Last year I went to my parents' for Christmas, and the year before I had just moved to Ottawa and the idea of a tree was exhausting. In 2013 I was still with my ex, and we used her fake tree, which I was mostly not allowed to decorate, and we used none of my decorations at all and didn't listen to the music that had been my family tradition when decorating the tree. So 2012 was the last year in which I had my own tree (it was a collaborative effort to decorate it, which was equally as nice as decorating on my own), and I missed being able to do it.

And the finished result:

Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

In the meantime, I'm in the midst of prepping for the "Un-Christmas" lunch I mentioned in my last post. I have all the cooking set up, either frozen and waiting to be thawed, or else sitting in the fridge or pantry waiting to be prepped. I have some last-minute fresh ingredients to buy, but apart from that, we're looking good.

Today I'm going to give the house a thorough cleaning (I hope I'll have time for everything I'd like to do, but it should be okay), and will finish Wednesday if I must. I have told myself that if I finish it all today I am allowed to treat myself to Rogue One at the theatres on Wednesday evening. I have two free movies thanks to my Scene card, so it'll be a nice, inexpensive reward, especially if I don't splurge on popcorn or anything else. House cleaning is not my forte, though, so I'll have to see. Maybe if I finish early enough on Wednesday I'll still get my treat, but the plan is to do as much as possible today.

Anyway, this entry got much longer than I was planning, so I shall stop there and pick up in a later post, possibly my 2016 recap post.