TMI Thursday with pictures...

So my TMI Thursday won't be quite as sharing as LiLu's posts, because though I love reading about other people's embarrassing moments, I rather not share them. Sure, you would love to know that during the first week of my last job in NYC, I was meeting my boss at her office, sitting at her brand new cream chairs only to get up and find out that I had left a very obvious dollar-coin size blood stain on it. And that I had to shamefully point it out and clean it up because I couldn't have just let it go, seeing no one else had sat on those chairs that day, and it was better to clean it while the blood was fresh, than having to stare at the ruined chairs my whole time there.

But nope, my mortifying moment comes from something I experienced a week ago. And because it freaked me out, I can't help but share...

A couple of weeks before I left for my trip to Spain and Greece, Lucas, the cat, started jumping on top of my fridge, something he had never done before. I have a drop ceiling in my kitchen, and of course, his sudden fascination with the ceiling scared me. After a bit of investigation, I saw mouse droppings on top of the ceiling, and in one of my upper kitchen cabinets.

The rest of my apartment was unharmed. I spoke with the lady at our office and confirmed: she had recently heard complaints of mice. Of course, I knew that Lucas was keeping the mice at bay. I also knew that my two weeks in Europe, when my place would be cat-less, I would come back to mice in my apartment.

I came back from my trip, picked up Lucas, and his interest is now on the bottom of my couch. I couldn't see anything underneath, but I knew they were there. About 24 hours later, while I was sleeping soundly, he jumped on my bed and started playing on top of me, as he does many times. As always, I reached out to grab the toy and throw it down.

And then I felt it: the "toy" was warm, soft and limp. And way bigger than any of his toys.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeek!!!!

I screamed like a little girl, turned the lights on and saw the dead mouse on top of my bed. He had literally just killed it (it was warm), and thought that it would be a grand idea to play with it in my freaking bedroom!!!

Luckily, there was no blood, and no mess to clean up after I threw the mouse away (in the midst of more girlish screams). I told everyone how I had grabbed a dead mouse (eeeeeeek!!!) but how proud I was of my cat for killing it.

3 months went by. After that incident, Lucas stopped jumping on top of the fridge and I no longer heard of mice sightings in the building.

As a Christmas present from my parents, I bought new bookcases so I could finally show the red walls by my front door. On the days right before Christmas I was busy emptying out my three old bookcases so that they would be ready for sale. Two of them had doors at the bottom, where I used to store mainly cleaning products and such.

I removed this big box of Costco garbage bags (that I originally bought when I used to live in NJ!), and behind it, I saw a hole on the back of the bookcase. The hole had very distinct bite marks.

Aside from the disappointment that now I can no longer sell the bookcase, I was freaked out. I took pictures, I emailed it to my parents and I was wondering what it was, but too scared to move it... In my mind I was making up hundreds of theories of what it could be aside from, you know, bite marks from mice.

A few minutes later, curiosity got the best of me. Who cares if it was past midnight on the 23rd and I would have to be at work in a few hours? I could not sleep not knowing. So I finished emptying the bookcase out, grabbed on to the sides and moved it away from the wall, where it had faithfully sat for the last 3 years.

I was met with this sight:

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!!!

Yep, BABY MICE!!!! Each of them was about half the length of my little finger -- couldn't have been more than a few days old. All shriveled and dried up. The back of the bookcase had been ripped off in many places. All I know is that when Lucas killed the mouse on my return from vacation, he hadn't just killed any mouse. He killed the babies' mama. When she died, they starved to death (how long does it take them to die without being fed? Eeeek!).

I sprayed Lysol on them, put the bookcase back in place and went to sleep (I didn't know what else to do).

I couldn't stop wondering how in the hell did my apartment NOT smell before they dried up? I emailed pictures of it to my parents, neighbors (who confirmed that my place did not smell) and friends (pissing one off, as she was eating breakfast when she read my email).

I left work early the next day, since I was hosting Christmas eve at my place. I got home and started cooking. Food was my priority, and I couldn't deal with cleaning the mice then. I made a non-traditional meal of steak and rosemary potatoes and baked (from scratch, as always) two birthday cakes for friends who were coming, and frosted (also from scratch) the cakes. I was done, the kitchen was cleaned and I had a lot of time left to clean the "rest" of my place.

So, I put some rubber gloves on, put on some shoes, and removed the bookcase again. With a garbage bag on hand, I removed the dead mice. When I was finally ready to move the other bookcase this was what I found:

A nest!!!!! A freaking nest!!!! IN MY APARTMENT!! Under my bookcase!!!! For mice!!!!!!

Inside was another dead mouse, and a couple of feet to the side there was yet another one. I cleaned it up, vacuumed it up, then (thank god for spot bot) the next day I also washed the carpets before setting up my new bookcases in place. I also carried (by myself, mind you), the damaged 6' tall bookcase downstairs to the dumpsters.

So there you have it, 3 months ago, when Lucas killed that mouse, he killed a whole family. If it wasn't for him, I'd now be living in a condo infested with mice.

I have never been so thankful for having a cat.

(And before you think I'm a cold bitch, I love -- loooooove -- animals, and felt totally bad for the baby mice. I had a couple of "humane" traps in my apartment, but they never went for it. If I had caught any of them alive, I would have driven to the woods and released them safely. I'm serious. But I still prefer to have dead mice any day over having live ones roaming around my place.)