Were Mice Predestined to Provide Food for Cats?

An insane cousin of mine once wrote an essay in which he made the case that God created mice – and other delectable creatures – as a handy means to store nourishment for carnivores. His argument centered upon an analysis of the entire food chain, from minerals and gases, all the way up through human beings, to their final consumer, the “conqueror worm” (Poe’s quaint term for the creature occupying the highest rung on the ladder). It’s simply a fact, you see, that the digestive systems of carnivores cannot directly process the earth’s raw materials. Only plants can do that. The flora consume nutrients from the soil and the air, convert them into products digestible by animals, and thus set in motion the cycle of food processing that has finally come full circle. Earth to earth and dust to dust . . . round and round she goes.

Carried away by his analysis, Harold (my crazy cousin) borrowed money from a stupid banker and went into the mink fur business. He named his enterprise Milady’s Abattoir, a euphemistic way of telling the world he was running a slaughterhouse. Harold’s business plan grew directly from his food chain research. He raised a colony of mice that he fed to a colony of cats that he fed to a herd of mink. After the mink were slaughtered and their fur converted to garments for ladies’ backs, he fed the mink carcasses to the mice . . . round and round she goes. The idea seems so plausible I still don’t understand why the business failed.

Anyhow, cousin Harold, from his cell up in Tuscaloosa, followed his successful essay with a series of articles on the same subject. (The original piece was favorably reviewed by the Baldwin County Daffodil, a now defunct newspaper that never existed over in Loxley.) These “follow-ups” eventually reached the point where it became apparent to Harold that the individual members of the fauna family were designed specifically for a particular carnivore, mice for example, being created at just the proper size so they could easily be devoured by alley catus Americanus.

I won’t bother you with Harold’s complete list of match-ups (lions-gazelles, herons-frogs, etc), but it does seem worth mentioning that Harold viewed omnivorous Man as God’s device for cleaning up the loose ends of the food chain. Harold explained those “loose ends” by claiming that “God may be perfect, but some of his creatures were not.” He had in mind the apparent fact that some cats were not as good as others at catching mice, and that some mice had even been known to band together into vigilante bands to protect themselves from cats, sometimes even making a meal of the cats themselves. Infidel theologians were quick to point out the logical contradiction between a perfect Creator and an imperfect creation, but Harold – in a clever rejoinder – simply dismissed the theologians as further examples of God’s great wisdom. “God gave us theologians so all of us would have someone to look down on.” Harold was not one to swallow an insult.

I was reminded of my cousin’s adventures by something my cat said to me at breakfast this morning. I would tell you what she said, but this is a family blog and her words are – shall we say – unfit for innocent ears (if there be such). Better I should just report that she was pissed off that the supply of mice in the house had dropped off considerably ever since I started calling myself “Mendacious Mouse.” The wee beasties, attracted by “one of their own” writing a blog, became regular visitors to this site. And wouldn’t you know it: they all choked to death on the truth.