Once there lived a great white hunter. Shall I tell you her story?

She was very furry and fluffy, with blue eyes, white gloves and lovely manners; in fact, she looked exactly like a Birman cat! I daresay that's what she was. She might even have been me. I'll call her Flossie, because she needs a name if I tell her story.

Flossie was a natural-born hunter, being a cat. But she was pedigreed and pampered, so everyone just assumed she probably wasn't. Besides, she had lived all her life with The Great Calico Hunter, and never had a chance to show what she could do. She watched and learned, and knew that no mouse that ever got into her house had lived for long, but she herself had never been proven as a hunter.

As years went by, the Great Calico Hunter grew very old. Her senses were not as keen as they had been, and she slept a lot more. Meanwhile, the Great White Hunter came into her prime and nobody knew. Until one winter, a winter exactly like this one. In fact it was this one! In fact, it may have been only a few days ago. In fact it was!

Flossie had been staking out the kitchen floor by the stove for days, and occasionally (not more than three times a day at the worst) even patrolling the kitchen counter, where she wasn't allowed to be. Her human didn't know what on earth was going on, but she was starting to get perturbed. I'll tell you what was going on.

There was a little gray mouse in back of the stove, and Flossie knew it all along but the older cat did not know it. That day the mouse had the unmitigated gall to run up the wall to the counter behind the microwave! How dare he! Didn't he know that I .......er, Flossie .....was a Great White Hunter? All six pounds of me .... er, ... her?

So Flossie clambered over the microwave, knocking down jar lids and spoons with a clatter, and pounced behind it. Well, .. sort of. It was a very tight fit back there and Flossie found, to her horror, that she couldn't move the parts she needed to get the mouse. Then her human came running in, just as Flossie popped her head up from behind the microwave, and went "eeeek!" Why, I don't know. She never saw a cat's head pop up in back of a microwave before?

If there's one thing you can always depend on humans for, it's meddling. Flossie would have gotten that mouse anyway, but the human moved the microwave and lifted her smack out of her first big hunt! Then the mouse ran out from behind it, too, shot Flossie a triumphant look, and ran back down the wall behind the stove. The human went "eeek!" again, but at least she didn't drop Flossie. She hugged her and kissed her and said how proud of her she was, which is all very nice, but Flossie was just totally exasperated.

Well, the end of the story has not yet come, but I don't know when it will, and I have to get back to ... er, ..my paws are tired of typing. Flossie, now that she knows her destiny as the Great White Hunter, is still staking out the prey. But her clueless human put one of those boxy mousetraps down. So wish Flossie luck, will you? Her story has a beginning and a middle, so I will finish it this way:

The end.