This blog reflects my personal experiences and opinions and does not represent or reflect those of DierenAmbulance Nederrijn.
Cat Attack: Mouse
Last night
Our cat has a bell on her collar to scare birds and other animals away before she can attack them. And we bring her inside at dusk to limit her hunting hours. But unfortunately every now and then she brings prey into the house.
Last night it was a tiny mouse. Thankfully it was still alive and from what I could tell, still intact with no puncture wounds. I set him free at the back of the garden.
This morning
This morning there was another mouse inside. I don’t know if it was the same or a different mouse, but this time I saw a wound on her little back and side.
I burnt some ventilation holes in the lid of a plastic container and placed the mouse inside with some fresh grass.
She moved a lot and must have been terrified. It wasn’t worth phoning the animal ambulance because my shift started in only an hour. Surely it’s simplest to bring her in myself, right?
30 minutes later I was on my way.
Animal Ambulance: At the Base
It’s often chaotic at shift changeover due to the number of people present; 3-5 people from the previous shift and another 3-5 for the incoming one. Plus a couple of gardeners, occasional external drivers, and a varying number of paid staff in the office next door who wander into the common room for a coffee break and to mix with the masses.
I waited for a calm moment to approach the centralist and register my mouse into the admin. This would ensure she’d get some attention.
The centralist is awesome! 🙂 She enters him into the system as I give her my details as the finder. She’s going to be brought to a shelter where she’ll get help.
As fate would have it, an idiot amongst the chaos wandered in our direction, overheard and tried telling the centralist it wasn’t worth driving to help a mouse. I expect this attitude from him; I’ve been frustrated before on other shifts that he leaves several rescues because he doesn’t want the drive, or to spend effort. “There are limits,” he tells me, and taps the box with my precious mouse. I move it out of his reach and push him away. He slinks off into the common room, tutting.
The centralist reminds me the shelter doesn’t provide help; it’s only equipped to look after healthy animals. By now, my mouse is hardly moving, but I can see her little belly heaving under heavy labour. She’s in pain and suffering. The options are bringing her to the wildlife rescue centre where she can be put to sleep, or to a local vet for the same to end her suffering.
Since the rescue centre doesn’t normally receive mice, it was prudent to give them a call to see if they could ‘help’ with the black hand of death. No answer, so we wandered to the common room to have a chat with the co-ordinator. She suggested bringing him to the vet as there was also a kitten at the base who needed to be brought there too – I hope for other reasons.
The common room was busy. I heard a sickening suggestion about dropping a stone on the mouse to put her out of her misery. Or breaking her neck by hand.
This tipped me over the edge. The base is situated near a forest, so I took a 5 minute walk into it and found a quiet, sheltered spot. I set my mouse free there; she tried to walk but couldn’t manage. That’s when I realised she’s vulnerable here too, of course, in the face of other wildlife, dogs and possibly cats. And perhaps the occasional ‘animal rescuer’ with a big hand and a heavy stone.
I scooped her up gently and brought her back to the base where I agreed with the centralist she be taken to the vet. I felt then as if I’d tied a massive millstone around the mouse’s neck.
The trip to the vet with my mouse and the cat fell on my list of rescues, but at the last moment it went to the other team. I wondered if this was the centralist thinking of my feelings. I placed her into Ambulance 2 and said my farewells, hoping that she would make it there, and not find her way under any stones on the way.
Unpacking my Feelings
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.” Matthew 23.37 (NIV)
Someone suggested I feel strongly about the mouse from the guilt that it was my cat who caught her. I think this isn’t true because this is in the cat’s nature (i.e.: “it’s part of nature”) and I’ve done my best to reduce her successful hunts.
I see a lot of animal wounds, injuries and illness through my work with the animal ambulance. And whilst I remain heavily compassionate towards each and every one of these animals I help rescue, I can’t claim that seeing this mouses’s injuries is the reason for my emotional attachment.
I’ve spent a while thinking about why I do because I’ll need to deal with things like this – and a lot more – when I become a paraveterinary assistant. I think it boils down to:
Frustration at:
- My own inability to save her.
- My reliance on other people to save her (agreeing to, and actually doing it).
- The injustice of where the “compassion / help limit” is set. (We drive kilometers to pick up donated clothing we sell for a pittance, but not to help this mouse.)
- My disappointment that some of my colleagues are not as compassionate towards animals as I’d hoped / expected.
And anger towards the comments about the stone and the broken back.
I’ll think about this some more, but so far it seems to make sense. These reasons are also broadly applicable to why I’m so vexed when I hear about animal cruelty.
Moving Forward
God’s given me tools so I can look after His creatures. Whether the tools are compassion, knowledge, organisations, people, or something else, I need to learn how to use them wisely!
“But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?” (Jonah 4.10-11 NIV)
