I have no idea why it has taken me so long to write a Randomly Thinking. I kept jotting down thoughts I wanted to add to it and then forgetting to flush them out.

I can’t promise any of these random thoughts will be very exciting, but here we go.

Our youngest cat is a killing machine. This summer she has killed several mice, moles, and at least two birds. There were several days in a row we would walk outside and find a dead rodent on our back porch and one day we even watched her hunt one down by the garage and carry it off in her mouth, very proud of herself. I might have allowed her to carry off the creature and eat it, except she didn’t do that. She decided to torture the poor thing by letting it get away for a few moments, then putting her paw out to stop it.

The little thing even got up on its hind legs and yelled at Scout who just looked at it first with wide eyes and then heavy eyelids as if it was boring her.

I told The Boy she was laying there with this mouse while the mouse screamed at her and it’s like she’s playing mental games with the mouse. It’s as if she’s saying “Come, sit with me. Let’s have dinner and a conversation. Oh. And just so you know, you’re dinner.”

In the end, I stepped in and we rescued the mouse by carrying Scout inside and leaving her in until the mouse could escape.

The Boy saw a dead mouse in the road  a day later and said it was probably the same mouse we had rescued. Oh well. We tried.

****

Speaking of cats, on a whim I uploaded a video to Instagram of my cat climbing out of my dresser drawer because she likes to hide in there.

Over 7,000 people viewed the video and more than 200 people liked it in less than two hours.

I said that was ridiculous, considering all the effort I put into other videos or posts I put up there and they get maybe four likes.

Little Miss shrugged. “Well, cats are cute.”

Yeah. She has a point.

***

One night before bed I was reading the Mitford Bedside Companion and I read an excerpt with the hairdresser Fancy Skinner to Little Miss.

Sections with Fancy include Fancy simply talking very fast and never letting Father Tim get a word in edgewise. When I was done with the paragraph, Little Miss looked at me and said,  “I’m pretty sure that’s going to be you when you get old.”

***

I looked up after using the portable restroom at a restaurant near us (they have it left over from when they could only offer outside dining) and this was looking at me from the window of the storage shed.

***

I do miss covering feature stories sometimes and get jealous of the funny people my husband meets in his job. A month or so ago he had to attend a birthday party for a woman who turned 100. It was at a nursing home. The niece of the woman said the woman had good days and bad days cognitively speaking.

That’s when the “birthday girl” called across the room to one of her guests, “Hey! Why are you wearing black?! I’m not dead yet!”

“Today,” the niece said to my husband with a smile. “She’s having a good day.”

This was further proven when the woman called out, “Where’s my beer?”

A family member told her they were getting it and would pour it into a cup for her.

“Forget the cup! Just give me the bottle!” the woman called.

May we all have as much fun at 100. Thought I’ll be doing with without alcohol since I am not an alcohol drinker.

***

Incidentally, this was the third person he’d done a story on in our area who had turned 100 in a span of about two weeks.

I once wrote a news story about a woman who turned 101 and subsequently did a follow-up story or photo on her for the next several years. She died in 2006 at the age of 109.

***

Little Miss and I were at Wendy’s one day and I saw a mouse trying to climb up the tire of the truck in front of us.

It made me think of Beverly Cleary’s Ralph the Mouse who liked to ride motorcycles. I wish I could have grabbed a photo in time.

***

Sometimes I wonder if Little Miss is really my child. She’s much too like my husband.

I’m not really into keeping things neat and organized (though I wish I was) like The Husband is.

Little Miss takes after him.

For example, recently The Husband opened up a new Swiffer duster and Little Miss’s whole face lit up. She grabbed it and ran toward the TV. “I can finally dust under the TV!”

I watched half in amusement and half in horror as she swept that dust away.

***

When we were trying to sell our house two years ago, we came home after a showing one day and found a pair of socks in the middle of the otherwise clean floor.

We couldn’t figure it out because the house had been spotless when we’d left.

The only one home had been our cat Pixel. After that more socks started to show up in the hallway and on the steps. After we moved, I again found socks on the stairs.

I knew Pixel was dragging those socks out but couldn’t prove it. That was until July when I looked out the bedroom door and finally caught her. There she was carrying a sock in her mouth.  I sent a text to The Husband: “I caught Pixel in the act of carrying a sock in the hallway — she carried it like it was either a dead mouse or a kitten so I don’t know if she was being maternal or psychotic.”

***

This summer my neighbor’s grandsons came for a visit from Virginia and Little Miss enjoyed going over to visit and jump on the trampoline with them. One day she also went swimming in their small pool.

She finally came back home, and I said, “Oh, I thought you’d stay over there longer with the boys here.”

She said, “Yeah it was fun to play but home is home.”

Those are my random thoughts for this time around. How about you? Anything random you’d like to share?