From ferreter to animal-rights champion

I was sitting quite still at the typewriter when a plump mouse emerged from under the fridge and crossed the kitchen floor, moving by monorail. Conscious suddenly of another presence, the mouse paused and cast a speculative and I thought conciliatory eye over me. His fur was a rich chocolate, his eye beady with interest.

Catriona — thank God! — was in the room above reading the paper. I heard her laugh out loud. ‘This woman!’ she called down. ‘She’s totally amazing!’ ‘Oh yes?’ I said. ‘In what way amazing?’ ‘She’s had all her toes cut off,’ she said. ‘She’s a cousin of the Queen.’

I looked at the mouse and shrugged. A French country mouse is a pretty, guileless thing. Very quietly, in case Catriona heard me, I sang to it, ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’, because this apparition of pure nature, quiet and unexpected, felt like an honour. Fixing his shiny black eyeball on me, the mouse weighed the matter up. Finally he concluded that on the whole he would be safer back underneath the fridge and returned there on his monorail.

Catriona greets babies and animals on their own terms. But not the mouse. If she sees a mouse, Catriona spills her popcorn. Restoration of equilibrium can take days. So for all of our sakes — mine, Catriona’s and the mouse’s — I kept quiet about it. But three mornings later, the bloody idiot ran out from under the fridge when Catriona was in the kitchen. And Catriona saw it.

I was outside on the terrace drinking the cup of instant coffee that might give me the energy to build a pot of the real stuff. She came outside all stiff and controlled and said: ‘I’ve seen a mouse.’

And that was it: the mouse’s fate was sealed.