Comments on: How high can a mouse jump?

By: R2L

R2L — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 02:57:21 +0000

Jerry, evolution does work in mysterious ways and places.
Ever try to find something in Home Depot after they have rearranged things?
Even apex predators have limits.
It can be a jungle in there!!

By: The Cat Herder

The Cat Herder — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 22:54:55 +0000

Used to live in the country in a house that had been empty a year, so yeah, we had mice. And we had a 20lb orange fluffy tomcat who was like a heat seeking missile to mice. Saw him, more than one time, move from one end of the house to the other in a blink to seize a mouse we hadn’t seen. But he never ate them… he’d play with them until they expired, then he’d bury them in the litter box and walk around singing songs of the valiant battle. Usually between 3 and 4am.

We also had four cats from a rescued feral litter who were good mousers, but all they’d leave behind was the tail.

By: jvermeer

jvermeer — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 17:04:12 +0000

A mouse can jump 13 inches. We can jump, on average, 13 inches. Most, not all, things can jump about the same height because they’re all effected by the same g force of the earth’s gravity. The difference is the ratio of the force generated by the entity’s legs to the mass of the entity.

By: Jerry

Jerry — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 16:11:51 +0000

I am always amazed at how evolution works! Mankind discovered that they could make cheap, reusable mouse traps out of Homer buckets and within a few mouse generations mice evolved to be able to jump exactly one inch higher than the height of buckets!
What a wondrous world we live in!

By: Hubert

Hubert — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 16:09:36 +0000

Mole snouts. Our first family cat, who hunted at night and waited at the back door to be let in in the morning (until the morning he wasn’t there–sad story), used to leave bloody mole snouts by the back door as proof of his prowess. There’s a Scots poem about that too–Albert D. Mackie’s “The Molecatcher”, which ends thusly:

Sma’ black tramorts wi’ gruntles grey,
Sma’ weak weemin’s han’s,
Sma’ bead-een that wid touch ilk hert
Binnae the mowdie-man’s.

Or the mowdie-cat’s. Another line from the poem, which I remember but cannae verify, goes:

Alang his pad (path) the mowdie-worps (mole corpses) like sma’ Assyrians lie…

Good line.

By: Jamie

Jamie — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 14:09:01 +0000

Long ago when our cat Toby (RIP) was young, he had been out all night. We had sort of inherited him from our old neighborhood, where we think he had once belonged to someone, but eventually became a stray, maybe when those people moved*, so willy-nilly, he was an indoor-outdoor cat.

Well, we got up in the morning and Toby greeted us at the door, meowing with great verve. We let him in to feed him, but he kept trying to herd us outside – coming into the house, circling us, then heading back to the door. Eventually we caught on and followed him back outside.

At the bottom of our porch steps, he showed us – with evident pride, and I don’t think I’m anthropomorphizing – a bird carcass. And then he performed the most amazing reenactment, leaping up and batting at the air repeatedly, then turning back to look at us expectantly.

Not until we gave him effusive petting and attention and congratulations on being a mighty hunter would he go inside and have breakfast.

* Lest you judge his previous owners (as we did), we almost got into the same situation with him on one of our moves: he took off as our furniture was being loaded up and did not return that night. We stuck around as long as we could, but eventually had to go to the hotel where we were staying for just the one night before moving, me by plane with two kids and, we hoped, the cat, my husband and the oldest driving, so the morning we were leaving we got up extra early and went back to the house to try to find him. Luckily he was waiting for us. He finished his life with us, but he was always his own cat.

By: om

om — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 13:11:20 +0000

What do tankers call infantry?

Crunchies.

War is hell.

TheChieftan (Nicholas Moran)

By: Jimmy

Jimmy — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 12:48:56 +0000

Just Lily: You might console yourself by the likelihood that if the mouse was just lying under that washcloth it may have been dead already.

By: Barry Meislin

Barry Meislin — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 12:41:21 +0000

Not so much useless as that they likely froze…in awe of life’s fathomless mysteries…
(Cats’ll surprise you from time to time…)

By: wendybar

wendybar — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 12:07:12 +0000

Sometimes, cats are useless. There was a baby mouse in my house in front of my fireplace. ALL three of my cats were watching in awe, but when the baby mouse would start to run towards them, they backed away in fear!! I caught the little mouse and brought it outside. It was too young to find it’s way back in, and probably died.