Shortly after we were married we bought our current home -- a house with beautiful bones but in need of some maintenance and rehab. The kitchen was one of those needs. Small, inefficient, and dated.

Edwina would NOT go in the kitchen (not that I especially blamed her!) We thought it was the noise made by the aged refrigerator maybe? She would bristle, get the fat tail, and run. So we fed her in the adjacent breakfast room.

At some point I became convinced there were mice. I insisted I saw one run by me one evening. My husband said "Impossible! We have a cat!" (Then who was chewing the bar soap I keep in a top drawer?)

A year and a half ago we had the kitchen torn down to the 2X4s --evicting the mouse family that lived up under the countertop and enabling my brave, brave kitty to venture into the room.

She can now safely enter the kitchen without fear of giant, rabid-eyed, cat-eating.......mice.