Last week, I reached for a frying pan in the lower kitchen cabinet, discovering what was either a single chocolate sprinkle or a mouse turd. We can't possibly have a mouse in a home with five cats, can we? I thought having cats was a guarantee that nothing creepy or crawly would coexist in our home, just look at all those old cartoons. Tom the cat was always chasing Jerry, whether it was out the back door or into two pieces of Sunbeam bread disguised as a snuggly bed. How could this possibly be happening? (We are building a garage that is drastically effecting the landscape outside, I heard mice come in when their outdoor homes are disturbed.)

As I'm toiling over my five lazy cats and which one is just letting the mouse walk on by, two are lounging on the couch grooming their perfect coats, one is sitting on the counter staring a hole in  the plastic container of Friskies Temptations, and the other two are outside, supposedly protecting our domain. I decide I must take matters into my own hands and purchase a humane mouse trap at Tractor Supply. If we have a little critter, I'll trap him, gently scold him for trying to share our home, then release him back to the wilderness of our yard.

The flat metal trap is the shape of a rectangle, large enough to house about four to five doughnuts. I lift the clear lid and plop a large spoonful of delicious, irresistible peanut butter in the middle of the trap. Certain that we will not catch anything but setting the trap only to ease my mind, I place it in the dark space between my flour and sugar jars on the shelf on the bottom cabinet and go to bed.

First thing in the morning, before brewing the coffee, I grab the headlamp off the bookshelf and peek under the cabinet. In the corner of the trap I see this cute little fluffball, with round ears, beady eyes, and white whiskers. Aww, I think to myself, suddenly glad I didn't use a gruesome glue trap. "I'm sorry buddy, you belong outside!" I say, as I release him by the drainage ditch at the side of the yard. He looks at me with one eye, thanking me for the meal before he runs off under the rust colored leaves. Just to be sure, though, I place the trap back under the counter.

The next morning, I peeked under the cabinet and there was another mouse, happily licking peanut butter off his paws as he sat in the corner of the humane mouse trap. Like the day before, I told him he needs to stay outside and released him in the side gulley thirty feet from the house. When we caught a mouse on the third day, I was starting to panic. How can you tell if you have an infestation?

 I had only seen one turd. There weren't chew marks on the cabinets or holes in the plastic rice bags in the pantry.  We'd caught three mice. What if they'd had babies? A sour taste burned in my throat as I asked Senia Mae to Google the life span and reproductive cycle of mice. She proudly announced that they fully mature in nineteen to twenty three days and could have a litter size between four and twelve. I almost threw up. If we'd caught three, there could possibly be nine more. Ugg.

The next two days we'd caught two more. I'd bought some Great Stuff to fill in any cracks in the foundation but then worried if I seal them in they might perish in the walls, their little corpses decomposing in places we can't reach. Kim realized the door sweep had broken off the screened door in the kitchen last summer. While she replaced it, I placed two peppermint sachets between the two kitchen doors. Even though we were taking all the correct mice blocking steps, I still worried. That's when I decided to do a deeper internet search of mouse behaviors. It's not like we live in a filthy house with food left out everywhere. How can we possibly have so many mice without knowing it? We have five cats!

I typed Can You Catch The Same Mouse in a Humane Mousetrap? into the Google bar. The answer was a starling yes. It said mice remember patterns and return to familiar areas out of habit. Could we possibly be catching the same mouse over and over again? Certainly not! But, just in case, the next morning when I opened up the cabinet and saw the cute little guy munching away in the corner of the trap, I toted him all the way to my office and released him in the woods by the parking lot.

The next morning there was no mouse and there have been none since. I feel like a complete idiot, catching and releasing the same mouse over and over again. Maybe I should just take it as a compliment. We obviously have the best peanut butter in the neighborhood.