GranolaBox

My friend Dave had a cat named Stan that he got as a kitten. Stan, like all kittens was cute as hell, and was really funny when he got into the catnip.

It came time to get Stan neutered. We felt kind of bad for him because he was getting his balls cut off in the prime of his life. We decided that we should do something special for Stan before he lost his kitty machismo. Our ideal would have been to get Stan laid, but that seemed hard to arrange, and defeating the purpose of sterilization.

Then Doug came up with what at the time seemed like a good alternative. We figured Stan was like us, and being college kids, without our balls we’d have very little to inspire us. So we decided since we couldnt get Stan laid, the only thing we could do to preserve his machismo was to let him kill something.

We piled into Dave’s car, drove to the local pet store and got a strapping white mouse for 99 cents. We brought the mouse home, and passed the opened box under Stan’s nose to whet his appetite for the ensuing hunt. Stan didn’t appear to be the least bit interested, but we were sure that would change once he got the mouse out to the open range.

It was the moment of truth. We blocked out most of the living room for the carnage. We put the mouse in one corner, and Stan in the other. The mouse scurried around, probably more frightened by our cheering than Stan.

Stan’s performance wasn’t anywhere near what we expected. Twice he tried to leave the pen, and when it became apparent that he wouldn’t be allowed to leave the pen, he licked his balls, as though he understood they weren’t long for the world.

To make it easier for Stan we grabbed the mouse by the tail and dangled him in front of Stan’s nose. Stan studied the mouse carefully, but it was clear Stan had no desire to kill.

His curiosity piqued, Stan moved in closer to get a sniff of this new thing. All of a sudden the mouse, dangling right in front of Stan’s nose, swung his right paw back and let loose the biggest possible wallop for a small white mouse. Stan was stunned, and bolted from the pen.

By that point we’d developed such respect for the mouse that we decided to elevate him to pet status. We found an abandoned aquarium, made him a comfortable home and named him Hector, after the legendary middleweight boxer Hector “Macho Man” Camacho.

For the next few days, all Dave’s friends had to stop by to check out Hector. He was quite a hit among our social scene, and partied quite heavily with us whether he wanted to or not.
After about a week of being the most talked about mouse in town, Hector’s hair began to fall out, and one morning Dave woke up and found Hector stiff as a board.

We all felt Hector deserved a hero’s funeral. We decided on a traditional Viking funeral. Dave and Doug built a raft of twigs, carefully bound together with a mast in the middle. From the mast, Brady, our artist friend, created and hung a dramatic rendering of Hector’s now legendary right cross to Stan’s nose.

After a short but solemn ceremony we doused Stan’s funeral barge with lighter fluid, lit the fire, and set him adrift on the Erie Canal. A fitting end for our warrior mouse.

As it happened, we need not have worried about Stan’s masculinity. Shortly after Stan’s neutering, Dave got a job and moved out of town, leaving Stan to the care of his father, who owned a salvage yard. Stan maintained his sweet personality, but perhaps because of the scrap with Hector in his formative years, he went on to become the best mouser in the two generations the salvage yard had been in the family.

Filed under: Yesterdaze on January 15th, 2007