There's a critter in my cabinet.

I'm starting to dread Monday mornings. It's usually the morning John leaves town, and as soon as he leaves the house problems ensue.

This week's little dilemma started when I finally rolled out of bed and stumbled to the kitchen to make some breakfast. As I stood in the kitchen I heard a distinct rustling coming from the area of our stove and microwave. Was something in the wall? No, not muffled enough. Was it in the microwave? Nope, nothing there.

After banging on the cabinets above the microwave the noise stopped for a few moments. Ugghhh. Some critter was in my cabinet! It didn't exactly sound big enough to be a mouse, but it sure sounded bigger than your average cockroach.

Panic over the creature scurrying around in the cabinet combined with my distinct lack of decision-making ability first thing in the morning left me standing uncertainly in the kitchen for...oh...probably a good three minutes.

During those three minutes I contemplated how large I thought the animal/insect sounded, what it might do if I opened the cabinet, whether I should have a broom or a can of roach spray in hand when I opened the cabinet, if a frightened mouse could launch itself out of a shelf that high and land on me, would a mouse actually bite me if it did jump out and land on me, and what sorts of diseases mice carry these days - do they still carry the black plague?

I came to the decision that nothing good could come from opening the cabinet and instead decided to bang on it again, at which point the critter scurried across the cabinet and apparently disappeared from whence it came.

I noticed the time and moved on with making my breakfast, which included cooking up a bowl of blueberry oatmeal and generously sprinkling it with chili powder. No, not on purpose. I was going for the cinnamon.

In case you're wondering, the only thing remotely similar between those two spices are the bottles they come in, their dark color, and that they both start with the letter "c". And even though my oatmeal smelled...suspicious...I took a bite anyway, promptly spit it back out, and then dumped the entire thing down the sink. Turns out I'm out of cinnamon anyway.

I blame the critter in the cabinet for this whole debacle.

After work, on advice of my dad, I went and bought some mouse bait just in case. We already have roach bait strewn about, so really, either way I think I'm covered. I'll leave it John to investigate. Thankfully, I do not need anything out of that cabinet.

My dad's other piece of advice was to "just try and ignore it" after putting out the mouse bait. I appreciate that he's trying to make it all better long distance, but me ignoring a possible rodent isn't very likely to happen. I guarantee I will be entering that part of the house each morning banging together some books, singing loudly, stomping around and turning on every light on my way to the kitchen for, oh, a good three weeks.

Or maybe just until next week's dilemma shows up.