Cold company and warm words

Thursday, 21 August 2025

Virginia Fallon is a staff writer and columnist based in Wellington.

OPINION: Hooray, the mouse is back.

While the truth is that I’ve been waiting for him - a bit like folks who do a jump scare in a horror movie - I had actually started to think that he wouldn’t come.

But last night as I was dishing out the cat food the mouse ran across the bay window; emerging from behind the dying succulent, dashing past the bottle of dish wash, then disappearing under the microwave.

If I were a decent sort of woman, I’d have shrieked, flinched or at least said something a little blue.

Instead, because I’m not, I just said: “Hello, you.”

I’m certain this is the mouse that spent last winter popping out of the oven elements and the winter before either hiding under the fridge or watching me from his perch beside the bath.

This is the mouse that usually turns up when the weather turns cold, and we’ve settled into a performance of mutual ignorance: I pretend I don’t notice him scurrying about, he pretends not to notice I’m not having an especially great time.

We’re old friends now, the mouse and me.

It’s funny, the things you find yourself get

ting used to. I used to be scared of mice, not as much as I was scared of stick insects, moths or those gruesome Gisborne cockroaches, though enough that I’d look for help when one appeared.

But a lack of help has a way of dulling the startle reflex. What once had me freaking out now barely raises my pulse rate.

Now I expect the mouse, spot the mouse, nod my greeting, and go back to feeding the cats.

Since he was last here, I’ve acquired two more nearly-cats: kittens that after four months I’m resolutely refusing to name but am clearly keeping.

“Two more cats,” I warn the microwave under which I last saw the mouse, “so you’d better be bloody careful, because I’m bloody well not going to be responsible for any of this.”

“What did you say?” yells my son from the other end of the house. He’s moving out soon.

“Nothing!” I yell back.

Once upon a time, the mouse was a problem. I set traps, shoved steel wool into gaps, and researched humane relocation methods as though I’d eventually develop the skills — or motivation — to dispatch anything more complicated than a succulent.

I complained to friends, sent blurry photos to colleagues, lay awake imagining the mouse sprinting across my face.

But familiarity breeds content. I stopped chasing the mouse and he stopped scaring the hell out of me. Now we’ve got a détente: one in which he stays mostly out of sight, I leave him mostly in peace, and the nameless cats watch like bored security guards waiting for a shift change.

The truth is that I see the mouse as an eccentric flatmate: mildly inconvenient, occasionally surprising, but ultimately part of the furniture. He arrives like a seasonal subscription I never signed up for but can’t quite bring myself to cancel.

And why should I? He goes about his business, I go about mine, and the cats ignore both of us.

Besides, it’s not like the alternatives are any better. A mouse in the house was unsettling right up until I decided that an empty house was worse.

Silence, of course, has a way of gnawing away at you too, and I’ve learned that it’s easier to live with even uninvited animals than none at all.

The mouse might be late but summer is still far away and “hello you” feels such a warm thing to say in the cold.