You’re moving to a new house, and not of your own accord, either. At the end of your lease your landlord decided on a whim to sell the property, leaving you no option to renew the lease. You have 30 days to get out. Luckily, you found a new place nearby, and you’ve arranged to be off work to make the move. Not so luckily, your husband has a fever the first day of the move and it’s twenty degrees outside. With a stellar display of your super-woman strength, and the help of a strong friend, however, you manage to move the biggest pieces of furniture on the first day, leaving some debris and your kitties at the old house to be moved when the sunlight returns tomorrow.
After scarfing down a pizza in Boxland Central, also known as your new home, you’re starting to feel clammy, realizing that you won’t be spared your husband’s illness. So you and your better-half make the decision to camp out in the living room and sleep on the mattress where it lies in the floor, being too sick and tired to set up the bedframe, the boxspring, and the mattress in their proper place in the bedroom. Sleep doesn’t come easily in the unknown darkness of the new place. The lights shining in from outside are alien, and the fever chills don’t bring comfort to the situation.
And then, in the unfamiliar darkness you hear a pitter-patter, a squeaking and a scurrying of tiny toes on hardwood floors. You know without having to guess what’s sneaking around in the darkness: mice – eek! Not that you’re terrified by small rodents, but you know that they can climb, and you’re only a foot off the floor, and you just know that if you close your eyes there will be mice in your bed. So you hop up, flip the switch, and your suspicions are confirmed. In the florescent glow of late-night artificial light you see the tiny grey minions with pink feet and black eyes staring back at you from the corner, as if you’re the one intruding on their turf and not the other way around.
There’s no choice but to stir your husband, despite his habit of sleeping soundly. He grumbles and groans and grudgingly gains his mind about him enough to understand what you’re telling him: that you must leave this place or be overtaken by mice! So you grab all the blankets you can, because the heat’s been turned off at the old house, load up into the frosty car, and travel the six blocks back to your old house. Inside, this once-familiar comfort zone no longer feels like home, what with all of your furniture already transported away. But your kitties are happy you’ve returned, and so you bed down together, in what you reckon to be the warmest room in the house, one big happy family. Now sleep comes to you like a long lost lover, and in your feverish dreams you plot revenge upon the mice: letting loose the kitties in the new house tomorrow.
