Back in 2012 we had a mouse in our house, and it got so brazen that we all saw it out of it's hidey-hole several times, but despite owning a cat that was young and spry, we only got rid of the mouse through the use of judiciously placed traps.
So when my wife saw Juno come in the house with a mouse tail hanging out of her mouth, she was proud of Juno for her achievement. Problem was that Juno didn't bring the mouse to my wife. Juno brought the mouse inside and then ran under the couch with it.
My wife was not looking forward to disposing of its body, but she wanted to get right on that before something gross happened, like the cat spreading entrails all over her floor or something.
Strangely, Juno came back out from under the couch, but did not have the mouse in her mouth anymore. She circled the couch, meowing constantly at it.
At last, my wife got some help from my daughter, and they lifted the couch to where they could see underneath it...and there was nothing there.
"Oh, no," my wife thought. "The mouse wasn't dead after all." Juno had brought a live mouse into her house, and now it was somewhere inside her couch.
They upended the couch, and that's when they got their first look at the mouse. It had climbed up onto the frame of the couch, but now that it was exposed, it wasn't going to wait around to be a cat treat.
It ran out of the couch, and scrambled across the room, looking for an escape route. They pursued it, and managed trap it in one corner of the room. The two tenderhearted girls couldn't bring themselves to off the mouse, so rather than smack it over the head with the broom, they grabbed the cat and threw her into the fray.
That was a pretty bad idea. Juno just isn't qualified for a job like that. Her resume would immediately be trashed if it came across the desk of someone looking for a good mouser.
Juno was willing to give it a shot though. She charged in after the mouse, which evaded her attack and ran over to the fireplace, climbed inside, up the chimney, found a crack where the top of the firebox is, and slipped back behind it.
Juno meowed and sat in front of the fireplace for the rest of the night, but there was no way to get after the mouse. It was stuck in there. It couldn't really get out, unless it wanted to die on the claws of a cat, and we couldn't get it out without a shrink ray.
Juno caught her first mouse, and was so inept that she didn't kill it. Instead she brought it alive into our house, and now it was loose in our house. Thanks so much cat. All that food we've been giving you over the years has been totally worth it.
There is a happy ending to the story though...but not for the mouse. Juno (and the rest of us) kept an eye on the fireplace over the next few days.
I even lit the fire one time, assuming that the mouse would come out rather than cook to death inside there, but either way it would work in our favor. Didn't work that way though. I think the position the mouse had found was protected from heat by the firebox, so nothing came of my attempt to flush it out of its hiding spot.
After two days hiding in there, though, the mouse finally got hungry or thirsty enough to risk making a run for it. Juno had heard it making rustling noises, and pounced on it the second it showed its whiskers.
She ran under the couch with it again, but this time, I came out and had my wife and daughter upend the couch. Juno wasn't tearing into the mouse under there. Instead it was standing on the ground in front of Juno looking like the two were having a conversation or something. When I caught sight of the mouse, however, I used a wiffle ball bat to dispatch it.
So, in a way, you could say that Juno caught her first mouse, but you could also say that she's just as worthless as ever.
