Miss Emma knows when fall is near ~ August 16, 1990

David Heiller

If Miss Emma could talk, she might tell you that fall is just around the corner. Other famous female weather watchers like Helen Feldt, Dutch Jones, and Sue Thue can put their noses to the air and sense that fall is close by.

Miss Emma was a good hunter,
but her only opportunity for bird
hunting was from the picture window.

Dutch knows it when her bear friends out east of Bruno stop making amorous advances and head for a warm winter bed.

Helen knows it when the temperatures in the Cloverton area drop below 40 degrees and threaten tomato crops.

Sue knows it when she starts daydreaming about the smell of her wild rice parching west of Sandstone.

But Miss Emma knows it’s fall when the mice start to move into the house. Miss Emma, you see, is our cat.

Miss Emma, like all cats, is fat, lazy and ar­rogant. But she can catch mice. She doesn’t eat them. Instead, she lays them out for us to see, like trophies. In the late fall, she will sometimes have three mice in a neat row on the hearth of the stove for us to admire.

So when Cindy heard a mouse in our bedroom three weeks ago, she called on Miss Emma. I was at a school board meeting at the time, so she told me about it when I staggered in at 1 a.m.

“There’s a MOUSE in this room,” she said in the same tone as she might say tomorrow, “Saddam Hussein has just dropped nerve gas on New York City.” A dead-serious voice. She had even seen it run across the floor and duck under her nightstand.

An opportunist.

“Oh yeah?” I said. It didn’t seem like nerve-gas news to me. Then of course I wondered, like all sexist males: Why are women so darned afraid of a little old mouse? And I smiled self-righteously and fell into a comfortable sleep.

The next morning, Cindy called Miss Emma in, carried her upstairs, and locked her in our bedroom for the day, with instructions to catch The Mouse.

Miss Emma let us down this time, because we heard The Mouse again the next night. Cindy saw it run into the closet. Somewhere in our closet. (It’s hard to tell where in our closet.) Scratching. Gnawing. Scampering. Break danc­ing. There’s nothing quite as loud as a mouse in a room where you are trying to sleep, in the middle of a black night.

The next day I called Miss Emma, carried her to the bedroom and locked the door. This time she succeeded, or at least gave The Mouse a scare, because we didn’t hear any more noises after that.

That is, until this past Monday morning. I was sitting at the kitchen table. Cindy had gone upstairs to wake the kids. And she screamed. Not your typical cry of surprise or anger. Not a shriek, not a wail, not a yell, not a yowl. Not a holler, a hoot or a screech or a howl.

We’re talking scream, folks. Texas Chainsaw Massacre style. It didn’t last long, maybe half a second, but it raised my hair on end. I dashed upstairs. Cindy was standing by the doorway of our bedroom, pointing at the floor where she had just stepped, barefoot, squarely on top of a dead mouse.

The Missing Sock Basket: 
a wonderful spot for Miss Emma.

If it wasn’t dead before, it was dead now.

I didn’t laugh, honest. That may have saved our marriage.

Cindy hugged Malika, whose hair was also standing on end like mine. (Cindy’s hair was not only standing on end, it had actually turned a slight shade of gray.) I picked up the mouse by the tail and showed the kids the source of Mama’s scream and Miss Emma’s pride.

Yes, she was proud. She came upstairs and rubbed against Cindy’s leg, until Cindy had to bend down and pet her and laugh and thank her. A grudging thank you, but a thank you none-the-less.

Yup, it’s official in our house: fall is just around the corner. Just ask Miss Emma. Cindy could tell you, too.