A Tag and a Mouse Tale

My friend, Erica had this fun tag on her blog. If anyone would like to try it, you can post your results here or on your blog.

The rules are simple.
Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
Find page 123.
Find the first 5 sentences.
Post the next 3 sentences.
Tag 5 people.

I won't tag anyone but I'll go ahead and post mine.

"The setting of a mystery locates the characters and the events of the story in both time and place. In the mystery genre's earliest days, it seemed almost to be a rule - mysteries had to be set in New York City, in California, or if the author was British, in England. Of course, this was never really true, and in recent decades, the "rule" as useless as a 30-year old train schedule."

From Writing Mysteries by Margaret Luke

The Mouse Tale involves the sweet black cat in the picture above. Mary was a Christmas cat about six years ago. The other night she proudly killed a very small mouse in my bedroom. I found it as I got out of bed--ICK! Because I was in a hurry, I stuffed it into a plastic trash bag and into the wastecan with the intention of taking it downstairs later. Somehow I never got around to doing it. So when I went to bed last night my first thought was sleeping in the same room as the corpse.

I thought it would be okay. While I was making my bed to get in bed (I never make my bed in the morning), I tossed my pillows on the comfy chair I read in. When I picked up the last pillow I saw---the mouse body on my chair!! I'm sure Mary's intentions were pure. She knows I sit there and had presented me with a gift. GAG! I had to strip the pillows and put on new pillow cases, sanitize the chair and turn the cushion over - after I removed the mouse back to the trash bag.

Mary usually sleeps with me and since I close the bedroom door at night, she has to pretty much stay in the room. About two thirty, I woke up and thought about the mouse. A couple of times in the night I'd heard Mary scrabbling at the plastic bag and the waste can. Figured she was trying to reclaim her prize.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought about her getting it OUT and bringing it into bed with me. While I'm not overly squeamish, the idea of waking up to find a deceased mouse sharing my bed is not my idea of fun. I got up, put on the light, took the plastic bag and tied it TIGHT. Stuffed it way down in the can and as I turned to walk back to bed--saw the mouse already laying beside my bed. Mary was walking up and down, giving little purrups of pleasure at how BRAVE she was, what a WONDERFUL cat. I was not amused.

I found a newspaper clipping and scooped the mouse back into the plastic bag. This time, I tied it and set it outside the bedroom door.

She has given me dark looks all day. I'm sure she's thinking, "Humans! Too dumb to appreciate such a lovely mouse."