My best furry friend

When I was ten-eleven years old, I had Japanese dancing mice as pets.

Yes, I know, the Life Unleashed challenge asks us to write about a memory my dog and I made together. But the mice a relevant to the story. Very relevant. And no, my dog didn’t eat the mice. It is nothing that dramatic.

Just a funny memory that makes me fondly remember my dog, who is no longer with us. If she were, she would be a Guinness World record holder, as this memory is from over thirty years ago.

These mice I had were very disappointing. Despite their name, they didn’t dance. Not one step of jive, or waltz, or anything in between.

But hey were cute. Tiny white things with black patches.

My mum and my dog - Lulu her name was - were equally apprehensive about these newcomers, but both got used to them.

However, trouble was brewing in the mousedom. I was supposed to have two calm females, but the assistant in the pet shop had given me two males. And they were nothing but calm. They enjoyed trying to shred each other to bits. Horrifying.

So back to the pet shop we went and swapped them for two females.

Or so we thought.

For a while, all was calm in the mousedom, and though our new pair of dancing mice still didn’t dance. At least they were getting on well.

A little too well.

One morning when I went to feed the mice, something was moving in the sawdust and newspaper shredding mix in their nest. Both of my two adult mice were outside the nest, so what was it?

You probably have guessed, but it didn’t cross my pre-teen mind that perhaps we didn’t have two females. That’s right, the clearly useless at identifying the sex of Japanese dancing mice pet shop assistant had given us a male and a female.

I moved the sawdust and shredded paper out of the way and revealed the tiniest living things I had ever seen. There were seven baby mice in the next. Pink and wrinkly and about the length of my thumbnail.

Lulu had turned up to see what I was doing. Wanting to introduce the newcomers to her, I placed two of them carefully on the palm of my hand and lowered them down for Lulu to see.

She didn’t seem too bothered about the baby mice. My parents’ reaction was rather different. They wanted me to get rid of the mice before they multiplied again.

With the help of rears and promises to find new homes for the babies, they reluctantly agreed to let me keep the mice. For now.

As the babies grew, and it was fascinating to watch them change so quickly, I found new homes for them. It was fairly easy to persuade some of my friends to give loving homes to the cute things that by now were changing from pink to white.

One night, when the baby mice were almost the size of their parents and ready to go to their new homes, I woke up to Lulu scratching under the bed. She was like a thing possessed. At least she wasn’t the barking type, otherwise she would have woken up the whole house.

She was usually very obedient, but when I told her to go back to her bed, she didn’t budge. She carried on scratching. When even after several more commands, she wouldn’t stop, I switched on the bedside lamp to check what was going on.

Once my eyes had adjusted to the light, I got out of the bed, and on to my hands and knees. I couldn’t see anything under the bed. But it was obvious she was after something.

Then I saw what Lulu was after. A tiny white thing with black spots scooted from under the bed to behind the chest of drawers. A mouse. And not just any old mouse, but a Japanese dancing mouse.

My eyes travelled from the chest of drawers to my desk and the cage where I kept the mice. The hatch on the top was open. I must have forgotten to shut it before going to bed.

I got off the floor to check inside the cage. Not a single mouse remained inside. All the bloody mice were loose.

I switched on the ceiling light and shut the door to my bedroom. Praying that they were all still in the room and hadn’t spread elsewhere in the house.

I had to find ten tiny mice. And I had to do it without noise. I knew my parents would insist on getting rid of the mice if they knew the mice had got out of their cage.

Thankfully, I had Lulu with her brilliant nose, sniffing out the tiny escapees. I was even more thankful when we hunted them all down inside my bedroom.

When all the ten mice were back in the cage, I double checked the hatch was down and locked. I crawled back into bed. Lulu jumped next to me and I let her. I hugged my little helper close as we both fell asleep.

One more word about those mice. After two more litters, my parents did insist we get rid of them. And by then, I readily agreed. After all, I was running out of friends whose parents would allow them to take pet mice.

I think Lulu was pleased, too. She was again the only pet in the house. Not that those mice could ever have threatened her number one spot. She was my furry best friend. And the best and gentlest mouse hunter, too.

(P.s. The dog in the picture is not my Lulu. All my pictures of her were taken way before the digital time. And they are all at my parents'. So therefore a picture of another adorable English Springer Spaniel.)