Boo-Boo Breaches the House

Last Saturday night, while I was uploading some of the cat stories to this very site, a new “tale”, so to speak, was developing simultaneously.  As I sat focused on this very keyboard and adding a near endless stream of 1’s and 0’s to a server somewhere in the Blogosphere, our cat “Boo-Boo Tail” was involved in yet another adventure “IRL” (In Rat Life).

Yes, it’s true.  Here’s the story.

It was around midnight as I was adding some of the stories about Boo-Boo and his friends to the weblog.  I was sitting outside, with the laptop placed on our patio table in our screen-enclosed patio, next to our swimming pool.  Alice was inside the house, watching television and knitting.

I heard Alice scream.  I immediately turned to face the family room that she was in, as I could easily see her through the all glass French Doors that separate the family room from the patio.  The French Doors, by the way, were opened slightly that evening, as South Florida was getting it’s first “cold front” – with the temperature finally dipping down into the low 70’s.  Alice was standing, her hands to her face, and she began screaming loudly again – and screaming things that I could not exactly interpret. My first thoughts, were “awfulizations” as I imagined body parts, blood and body parts strewn about – after all, what could possibly cause Alice to scream so loudly and hysterically while only minutes earlier she was knitting.  Who knew that knitting could be so dangerous?

So, I quickly (pressed “Save” and then) ran into the house to save my wife from whatever was causing her to scream!  As I got up to her she, my eyes wide-open, I asked, “What’s the matter?  What’s wrong?”.

She didn’t say a word. She pointed. She pointed towards the floor, on the inside of the French Doors.  Laying there was Yet Another Rat.  Yes! And, this was no ordinary dead rat – no this was one of the bigger dead rats we’ve seen.  However, this was the first time that we have come across a dead rat inside the house.

We were appalled about just how close this particular incident could have been to an even worse, imagined incident.  The ‘worse case’ incident would go down something like this:  Boo-Boo captures large rat. Boo-Boo enters house with large, but-not-quite-dead-yet rat.  Boo-Boo, momentarily, releases not-dead-yet rat in order to continue to ‘play’ with his prize.  Rat, despite being wounded, runs under Alice’s feet and into her bag of yarns.  All hell erupts, as evidenced by mushroom cloud seen miles away over what was once the Clary’s home in the suburbs.