Cat & Mouse

Photo by Europeana on Unsplash

A chilly day in September. Summer just about gone, but it’s still clinging to life, like it knows we’re all ready for it to be over. We’re walking to the pool for the final time. A makeup lesson. Because the indoor pool has been closed for maintenance for the past two weeks.

My sons are talking about board games, and I ask them if they have ever played Mouse Trap. I don’t know where the thought comes from because I haven’t played, or even seen, the game since I was a kid.

They tell me they’ve heard of it, and I explain the game. The good and the bad. Its complicated set-up, the thrill of finally running the marble through the trap, and the inevitable letdown that happens when the thing falls apart on you half way through the game.

They all agree it sounds fun, and they ask if we can get it. “We’ll see,” I say because as a parent that has become my stock answer. And because I’m not sure if we will get it. I’m not sure if it’s worth it.

When we get into the country club, we wave to the kid at the greeting booth, who smiles like it’s normal for the kids to be in shorts and flip flops when he’s wearing jeans and a hoodie.

As we round the bend to the stairs that head down to the pool, I realize that something is off. Aside from the cool weather, we aren’t hit with the heavy dose of chlorine like usual.

When we reach the stairs, my middle son pauses. A large gray cat is sprawled across the bottom stair. “It’s okay,” I tell my sons. “He’ll move for us.”

I proceed down the stairs, and they follow tepidly. We get to the final stair, and the cat still hasn’t moved. I try to prompt it, but it won’t budge.

“We’ll just have step over it,” I say. Once I’m past, I lift my sons over the cat, who doesn’t even flinch as we climb over.

“It’s like Tom from Tom and Jerry,” one of the boys says, and we all laugh, as we make our way down the hall to the indoor pool.

When we reach the door, we see that it’s locked. I peer in, and the pool is empty. It’s clearly closed for maintenance, and I’m immediately angry that we didn’t get an email notifying us of the prolonged closure.

My kids are as surprised as I am, but they don’t seem to care. As we turn to head back to the stairs, my oldest son freezes. “A mouse,” he says.

Before I can say anything, the cat sprints down the hall toward us. Sure enough, a small mouse scuttles from out of the corner and runs past us and past the cat back down the hall toward the stairs.

We’re all a little startled by the commotion, and I check to see if my boys are okay before leaving. We wait a minute then head for the stairs. When we get there, the cat is back on the bottom step.

Only this time, it’s clear he’s not being lazy. His tail is wagging, and he’s staring into the shadowy corner at the bottom of the landing.

I peek over and see the poor creature, frozen stiff.

Before I can decide what to do, the mouse darts out, followed by the cat, and my kids run down the hall screaming. I follow in quick pursuit.

They’re shaking and laughing nervously, and I’m trying to devise a plan. I tell them to wait in the hall by the entrance to the pool, and I go back to the stairs to check on the situation, but the cat has returned to his original spot on the stairs, and I don’t have to look to know the mouse is there as well.

I go back to my boys, trying to figure out if there’s another way out. There is a door on the other side of the pool we’ve never tried before. Having no other choice, I decide to give it a shot. I try the door and it opens. We push through a small, unlit gym with some free weights a few basic machines to the door on the other side. Once we’re through that door we spill out into another hallway, almost a mirror image of the hall on the other side near the pool. Only this hall is dark.

I search for the lights but there are none. At the end of the hall, just one word, glowing fiery red. EXIT. Light spills around the edges of the door. As we step closer, we see the small sign for the first time. “Emergency exit only.”

For a second, I consider pushing through the door and making a run for it, but I don’t want to trigger an alarm and cause a scene, partially because of the inconvenience to the staff, but even more because I don’t want the negative attention.

I look at my kids, and it’s clear by the look of horror on their faces that they prefer the cat and mouse chase to the possibility of triggering a loud fire alarm.

We turn back through the dark hall, back through the gym, and spill out into hall on the lit side of the building with the closed pool.

The cat is still there, and now I really don’t know what to do. I don’t want to get between a frenzied cat and its jittery prey, and I certainly don’t want my kids anywhere near it.

So, we wait at the end of the hall. And as the boys chat about a Tom and Jerry episode they once saw, I realize the irony of the situation, that we’re trapped, just like the poor mouse in the landing.

While the kids laugh and chase each other around our little nook in the basement floor of the country club, I think about the book I’m working on, about how all good stories have this cat and mouse component where someone wants something and another character tries to stop it. I think about how it always gets to a point where the main character is trapped in a corner, about how thrilling it is in that moment when someone or something is forced to act. About how it’s often the most exciting part of the story.

But here and now, it’s just sad. Because I know how this story will end.

Sure enough, my son calls out. “He got him.”

I turn the corner and see the cat stroll out with the mouse in his mouth. I hold my kids back from running over to to get a closer look, hoping that the cat doesn’t bring the mouse over to us to show off the kill.

Thankfully, he turns left and slips into a room at the other end of the hall, finally clearing the stairs for us to leave.

I pick up the three year old and nudge the other two up the hall. And we race upstairs and outside, gulping the fresh air like we’ve just emerged from a dungeon.

On the ride home, as the kids replay the events of the cat and mouse chase, I think about how weird it is that I asked them about Mouse Trap when we first arrived. I think about how life itself is a game. About how events come together, piling on top of each other, to make meaning out of nothing.

Maybe that’s all life is, one event chasing the next, until it reaches some kind of ending—a definite resolution. The mouse is caught. The cat struts away in victory. The family gets to go home. A little shaken up. A little wiser. A little more appreciative of the freedom they’ve always taken for granted.

The game of cat and mouse is done. And so the story draws to a close.

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