Consorting with the enemy?

A couple days ago, I was cleaning up the dining room when I picked up a clean casserole dish. I was about to put it away, when I noticed some dirt inside. Upon further inspection, I realized it was mouse poop -- the tell-tale sign of a mouse in the house. This set off a frenzy of inspections. As I scoured the rest of the dining room for any other mouse evidence, I surprisingly found none.

Life interupted my frenzy and later that evening, my roommate and I settled into the couch with a glass of wine to catch up and watch TV. I mentioned the mice and ways we could make our house less mouse-friendly. We have a pile of bags (plastic, paper, reusable) on the floor of our pantry, so I recommended cleaning that up at some point so that the mice didn't find it and decide to nest there. Roommate said, "Oh, we don't need to worry about the mice going in there, Stupid Cat naps in their all the time!" (Note to self to only reuse those bags for trash.)

I recommended being more careful about cleaning up horrible cat's food that he spreads around his food bowl. She said "Maybe that could be good bait! The mice will come up to the bowl and then Stupid Cat can attack!" (Not a horrible thought, except I doubt the mice are dumb enough to walk up to a cat while he's eating. And horrible cat will probably be too full to care about a mouse if he's already eating.)

So yesterday morning, I reached into the pantry for a bag to use for recycling. As I lifted the bags to find a suitable one, I found quite the collection of mouse poo. Apparantly horrible cat is sleeping with the enemy -- he's probably bringing them food too.