Keep telling myself - mice are the enemy

Mice in the house are A BAD THING. Think about Weil's disease. Think about their insanitary habits. Think about Tiny crawling round on the floor.
Repeat after myself. "Good Cat! Good Cat! take it outside and eat it now please."
Do not scream, do not scream.

Honestly, how wet am I? Last night I did scream when I unexpectedly found one with a dead mouse, and she growled at me impressively - none of this "Here you are, take this prize as an act of tribute mistress!", more a "My Mouse! Mine. You will prize it from my cold dead jaws (with severely lacerated fingers)." growl. Did you know that cats could growl?
Today I was much better when I found her in the act of catching one, and just shooed her gently out of the cat flap (where she inevitably lost it in the garden). Still, a vast improvement on our late lamented original cat: the mice used to steal chunks of food from his food bowl and secrete them in inaccessible corners to rot.

Thank heavens for that

The higher education minister has finally come out and said the truth behind the anti-spin - a loan that you don't have to repay unless you're earning a certain amount is almost indistinguishable from a tax. They're also going to try to inform the general population that the new style tuition fees will not have to be paid in advance, which seems from the various vox pops I've seen to be a widely held misconception amongst children of non-graduate parents. It's yet another disastrous bit of PR for redistribution/means-testing, right up there with pension credits (do you remember the woman pensioner who was very nearly imprisoned for non-payment of a council tax bill she was mostly exempt from anyway).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4304774.stm

Genetics is a wonderful thing

With just 36 hours to go until he hits 14 months, Tiny has (more or less) learnt how to stand up. This means that he has just about scraped under the wire before the development charts in What To Expect: The First Year would class him as a late developer, and suggest we take him to a doctor.
I wouldn't mind, but this is about the third time he's done this (although he has done other stuff well ahead of schedule, so we're not actually worried).
Truly he has inherited his parents' deadline-surfing talents.