When we got home tonight from a hard day trailing around DIY shops, second hand furniture shops and the biggest charity shop ever, tired and hungry, it was to find the cat behaving strangely. He was prowling around the fridge, trying to squeeze his not inconsiderable bulk into the little space beside it. Aha, thinks Nick, maybe there’s a mouse! And quite rightly too; a little mouse suddenly appeared on the opposite side of the fridge to the cat, and disappeared again just as quickly, underneath the fridge.

Nick moved the fridge out of its alcove, the cat could get all the way round now, but couldn’t find the mouse. Nick got a length of wood, which he swept under the fridge; no sign of mouse, just an embarrassing amount of dust and fluff. He shone a torch under the fridge, which frightened the cat away, but didn’t show up a mouse. He propped the fridge up on bits of wood, shone the torch in the back and lo and behold, a mouse, wedged under the compressor! 

He dislodged the mouse, which shot across the kitchen, to hide under the bags we’d just unloaded from the car, the cat shambling along behind at a leisurely pace. As we removed the bags, mousey ran under the dresser; Nick swept with the stick, loads more dust and fluff, but by this time, the mouse had climbed the wall behind; a sweep of the wall saw it tumble behind the bin. The cat, however, had long lost all interest in the mouse and had wandered off, leaving Nick to deal with the disposal of the mouse. 

The cat may be a dead loss, but we did find a piece of furniture for the landing in the gite.