In the mountains, there are certain animals that seem to exist in the food chain, and certain animals that... Well... Don't. 

The ones that survive seem to be the really big ones, like bears, mountain lions, coyotes, deer, elk, moose, etc... Small ones, like mice and rats, seem to do fairly well for themselves as well.

Cats are part of the grouping of animals that.... Don't.... really..... have..... much luck surviving in the mountains. The mountain lions and coyotes really like to eat them. It's a fact.

And you know what happens when the cats don't survive? The mice do.

Above is a picture of our beloved, dearly departed (we're pretty sure), Redford.

Oh, Redford... He was SUCH a good cat. The best. Not only did he single-handedly keep the mouse population at bay around our house, but also was sweet, house-trained (no litter box... he went outside), and good with the kids.

When I was pregnant with Little Blue Eyes and experiencing some cramping early on, nothing helped until he crawled into bed with me and layed on my abdomen for a couple hours, helping me fall asleep. I don't know what it was -- the warmth or the weight of his soft little body -- but when I woke up, the cramping was gone.

Like I said, he was SUCH a good cat. Sob.

We were very sad when he disappeared last June. At first we weren't going to get another cat, but then I figured I would rather have a cat than mice, so that is how Paula Deen came into our family...

I really like her and she is almost everything I could ever want in a cat.

She's really pretty.

But guess what... Pretty is as pretty does.

She really is not a very good mouser. We don't let her outside because, like I happened to mention, cats don't fare so well living outdoors in the mountains, and we'd rather keep her alive, unlike poor Redford.

Sob.

This leads me to the incredibly disturbed state that I find myself in at the moment.

It all started innocently enough... Some family had passed onto us some baby clothes. I had the urge to wrangle up all of our baby clothes, some of which were packed away in our basement (which is unfinished and is not connected to the main level of our house... you have to go outside to another door) and sort through them, organizing them by size, gender, country in which they were produced and the RGB color scale.

Yes, I was going to get things organized.

I went down to the basement to get the tubs of clothes stored down there. Somehow this little task mushroomed to me embarking upon a full exploration of the contents of all of the tubs of randomness stored in our basement, as well as miscellaneous horse tack, fencing equipment, gardening supplies, household items, and the like.

I was getting way to big for my britches.

I'm always up for a big project, and since we're (hopefully) moving sometime soon here, I thought I had better just dive in and get the basement all tidied up.

The thing is -- and this is where my current state of mental disturbance comes in -- there was mouse poop EVERYWHERE.

Shudder. Shake. Cringe. Squint. Gag. Shiver.

I am not opposed to getting my hands dirty. I have done my share of dirty jobs and come out the other side sparking and triumphant. I can handle the dirt. I can handle some grunge.

But mouse poop is another matter.

Luckily, I did not do any sweeping or vacuuming or really anything that would have stirred it up much and made it airborne, but I am still totally freaked out. Why? Because I did a little internet research (after I emerged from the basement, of course) and found out about a little thing called the hantavirus.

Shiver.

In sort of a weird coincidence, Mr. Blue Eyes was meeting at our church with a local health department worker to keep up on the water system maintenance, so I called him and asked if he could pick the guy's brain as to how to deal with all this mouse poop. He said that they really don't worry too much about hantavirus where we live because it is transmitted by the deer mouse, and most of our mice are field mice.

O.k., so that's good.

He said to use a bleach solution to disinfect before cleaning.

O.k., good. I still don't want to have anything to do with the mouse poop, but at least we don't have to hire a haz-mat team or anything.

The chances are slim that I would have inhaled anything, and even slimmer that anything I did inhale would contain the virus.

Sure, good.

But in all honesty, I am still FREAKED OUT! I think all my internet research almost gave me a heart attack.

I'm just a bit shaken up about the whole thing.

To get my mind off of it, I immersed myself in the world of baby clothes. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy for awhile. Then I realized the immense amount of clothes that I have to sort through and that feeling of approaching heart attack crept back. Then I started having visions of all the boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes that I'll have to deal with when we move, and I felt like I was going to faint.

Seriously... The head spinning, walls closing in and everything.

Now I'm sitting here, writing to any of you who will read, sharing my freaked-outed-ness. And you know what, I think it helps me feel a little bit better! I just needed someone to know what I'm going through. Thanks for listening. You're super.

I think I'm ready to take on those baby clothes now.

p.s. - Redford, I miss you so, so much. If by some small chance you're still alive, please come home and lay on my uterus and kill all the mice.