We’ve had George and Gracie for about a year and a half now, but it wasn’t until last night that we realized we had a champion mouser on our hands.
Of course, I’m talking about Gracie (aside from the opportunity for hilarious photo ops, we expect very little from George). Beneath her super-soft, beautiful smoke grey coat and big blue-green eyes, lies the heart of a ferocious killer.
Last night, DBF and I were playing with George and trying to capture more airborne pictures, when we heard a crash in the bedroom. We thought Gracie might’ve accidentally jumped onto George’s food bowl, so we didn’t investigate. A few second later, Gracie comes padding into the living room where we sitting.
DBF: "Oh, Gracie’s got a mouse."
Me: (Jokingly) "Are you sure it’s not real?"
DBF: "No, it’s one of the little toy mice."
(Pause.)
DBF: "Oh my god. It is real."
After I screamed and scrambled into the corner of the couch, and DBF told me not to scream at Gracie, we watched as she tormented the mouse, which was petrified, but not dead. She’d set it down. It’d run around a bit, and she’d trap it and pick it up again, only to repeat several times. After it seemed like she wasn’t going to go in for the kill anytime soon, DBF trapped the mouse and we threw it out on the street.
This incident reminded of the time, several years ago, when Scooby (R.I.P.) came bounding into the kitchen from the backyard, and set a dead gopher at my feet. He was wagging his tail, so happy, until I realized what it was and screamed. After my Dad explained to me that it was wrong to scream at him for what was essentially a gift (not to mention a good thing that he was eradicating the backyard of gophers), we tossed it in the trash and rewarded him with a treat.
So that’s what we did with Gracie after we threw that mouse on the street, where if it’s not as good as dead, it’ll at least run and tell its mouse-friends to not mess with our apartment, in which resides a ferocious almost-killer kat.
Everyone has the right to free speech. 
Whilst recounting our Halloween experiences over dinner the other night, I realized what a truly devious little kid DBF was. While I would wear costumes and go door-to-door begging for candy, he had a much smarter solution to collecting sweets. Instead of dressing up and trudging around carrying a bag of candy, as kids from the suburbs—like us—did, DBF simply waited until his mother, a single parent, took his little sister out trick-or-treating, then shut out all of the houselights, and hoarded all of the candy she bought for him to give out to trick-or-treaters. When they came home, he’d tell his mother that tons of trick-or-treaters came by, and they ran out of candy. Because he was often left with a lot of the same candy—if his mother had bought 5 bags of Snickers, for example—he’d threaten his little sister with a beating unless she shared some of her candy with him.
The news 
This year’s Atlantic Antic street fair was less interesting than in previous years. Maybe I have a rose-colored recollection of past Antics, but this year was just filled with crappy street food vendors and cheap jewelry vendors (the kind of stuff you can get any day in SoHo or Union Square). I love mozzarepas (basically two arepas sandwiching a layer of and mozzarella cheese) as much as the next person, but what’s the point of a local festival if I can get food there that I can get at any dang street festival in the country?
