I have a tenant. He’s a furry, nocturnal drunk who sleeps on my couch and eats my leftovers. I call him Sir. He is not my cat in the way dogs are _your_ dog. He is a force of nature that arrived one day and decided my life was his hotel. Our relationship is complex. He wakes me from good dreams to demand tribute, and when I play music, he attempts to harmonize with the sound of a broken accordion.

Last Sunday, Sir came home from his nightly "drinking" and presented me with his tribute: a very alive, very terrified mouse. He dropped it on the rug with a look of profound generosity, as if he’d just handed me the keys to a new car.

The mouse, ungrateful for the introduction, immediately vanished into the sprawling metropolis of clutter I call a bedroom. My partner, upon hearing the news, handled it with the quiet grace of someone who believes mice are made of pure horror. The mantle of "strong one" fell upon my shoulders, a title I accepted with the courage of a man who squeals when a shadow moves too fast.

For two days, we lived under siege. We barricaded the doors. Sir and I conducted frantic, clumsy patrols, a mismatched militia armed with a broom and a complete lack of dignity. I built a Rube Goldberg-esque bucket trap from internet instructions—a rolling can of peanut butter poised over a watery doom. I was sure it was my masterpiece.

But the mouse was a ghost. The only trap in the room, it turned out, was my own mess. My makeshift laundry bin—a mountain of clothes atop a bin of recycling—was a functional deathtrap. The mouse had sought refuge in the soft folds of a t-shirt and met its end in the agitator of the washing machine. My partner’s scream was the announcement of its discovery.

My cat-person friend says Sir did this because he loves me and thinks I don't eat enough. I’ve been fasting, thank you very much. His concern is noted, and his rating as a hunter has been updated to: "Excellent at procurement, catastrophically bad at delivery."

I will be very sad when Sir eventually leaves. But for now, I’m rewashing an entire load of plague-adjacent laundry, and he’s sitting on the couch, looking terribly pleased with himself. He believes he provided the food and I, his clumsy human, simply bungled the preparation.

He’s probably not entirely wrong.