Do you see what I see?

The window in our bedroom is tiny and looks out into the window well. We’ve painted the concrete walls white so that we get as much light as possible into our room. That window is the only window that actually gets direct sunlight so it’s a very important window in our house.

The cats have been obsessed with looking out that window, which baffles us both. There’s nothing to see except for white gravel (the better to reflect light), a cool hunk of green glass Kent’s mother got us, a couple of tiny, scraggly weeds and the concrete wall. We speculated that maybe they were looking up through the iron grate—which is also covered by a screen—to see birds and squirrels.

Yesterday I looked over Wally’s shoulder to see what he was staring at because he wasn’t looking up, he was looking out. This is what I finally noticed:

Do you see it? At first I thought it was a real mouse corpse until I noticed the tag. Then I realized it was one of our toy mice (this one is from Kent's mother, I believe). But the bigger mystery is how it got out there. We open the window for fresh air, of course, but we don’t open the screen. So last night we amused ourselves by making up stories about how that mouse got out there.

My story involved the Cat Nanny and also explains why Eddie turned against her so violently. In my account, she opened the window, tossed a toy out there and then made Eddie go out. Naturally enough, this indoor-only kitty freaked out, attacked her and the poor abandoned mouse was left to his fate.

Other options include cats transporting themselves through solid objects by way of that alternate universe they seem to favor, but that seems a little far-fetched. Or maybe Wally figured out how to open the screen despite having no opposable thumbs, tossed the mouse out and then closed everything up again.