It was one of those "I wish my camera had batteries in it" moments.

Around 2 yesterday, I was down in my office doing a little work and heard Kirsten yell something along the lines of (but not actually) "Eek! A mouse!". I walked upstairs to find her, Heidegger, and Cayce huddled around Kirsten's bicycle helmet, under which she'd trapped a little mouse. Kirsten had called me up because, although she had fearlessly managed to trap the mouse under her helmet... she had no idea what to do next.

I slipped a thick letter-sized envelope under the helmet and carried our little bundle outside. Kirsten and I figured it would be a perfect moment to introduce Cayce and Heidegger to a mouse and have them learn the "proper way" to deal with it. Boy, how wrong we were.

At first, neither of them did a damned thing with it. It was, understandably, terrified and stood still in the grass while the group of us towered over it. I brought Heidegger a little closer, thinking his feline instincts would kick in and he would dispatch the mouse forthwith. He walked away.

Cayce wasn't much better. At first, she only watched the mouse. Later, she played with it like one of her toys, but was careful not to hurt it at all (aside from a stomp on the backside to get the little mouse running).

At one point -- and this is where I have to admit shame to all catkind for our Heidegger -- the mouse climbed up onto Heidegger's paws to hide from the dog. And Heidegger let him sit there.

We finally took pity on the damned thing (it was awfully cute), packaged it in a shoe box, and took a drive out to the dog park to release it to the wild.