Happy Birthday Jr. Cat Snack!

In March 2003, Peanut caught two baby mice. One was so young it didn't have it's eyes open yet, the other was the same size and did. They were smaller than the tip of my thumb. I didn't have the heart to let the cat kill them and I couldn't throw them outside or flush them or whatever. So, I put them in a cherry tomato container and waited until Michael came home from work. I figured he could do the dirty work.

Well, he didn't want to kill them either.

So that night we fed them milk with an eye dropper and put some cotton in the carton. I named the close-eyed one Lucky and the other became Jr. Cat Snack. I jokingly told them that if they lived a week I'd buy 'em a fancy cage.

Lucky, wasn't. The next morning I found a new container for Jr. Cat Snack, tossed in some raisins, oatmeal and a tiny dish of water and waited to see what would happen.

Here's Jr. Cat Snack on his First Birthday with a pretty fancy cage ...


If you look carefully you can see a nick in his left ear and a kink in his tail. Those are from an escape he made while I was cleaning his cage one day. Over the course of the next three days, the cats caught him over and over again and he made narrow escapes. I ended up putting his cage on the floor with the door open and his favorite food (yogurt chips) inside. A skinny and dented up Jr. Cat Snack ran back into his cage and hasn't tried to break out again.

Here's the Four Year Old now...


Every year on his birthday he gets another chunk of trail-tube, a new exercise wheel (he wears them out) and other toys. He earns his keep by being a source of torment for the cats... he lives in my studio -- a Feline Restricted Area.