The One with the Not-Dead Bird

There’s a bird. In the house. Not dead. There are cats. In the house. Also not dead. This is a problem.

It all began one bright spring day. We were feeling bright and spring-like and so were the cats. One of them (and I’ll mention no names so as to protect the innocent) caught a bird and brought it into the house.

Actually it all began before this particular bright spring day, it started in the dead (and this word will be coming up again soon) of winter. When I decided in my wisdom (which is what I like to call my disturbed mind) that what our house really needed were some nice fluffy, innocent, cute loveable man/baby substitutes. But just like real life (this isn’t real life, this is my life) the men/babies turned out to be not fluffy, innocent, cute and only sometimes loveable. They turned out to be hair-droppers, furniture-defacers and hardened killers.

In days of yore when I had a man and babies I spent many a wonderful hour/life dealing with delights such as –
Live nappies
Lively mud on surfaces
Mud on live people
Underfoot Barbie accessories
Living physics experiments
Mostly alive man
and
Underwear

Now I have man/baby substitutes I deal with such delights as-
Dead mice
Dead shrews
Dead worms
Dead birds
Dead fluffy toys
And
Deadly fear
of dead things.

But the thing about dead things is that they are static.

There’s a bird in the house. Not dead. Not static. There are cats in the house. Also not dead or static. I have isolated the two genres with a cunning use of doors, shut cat-flaps, rope and chewing gum.

I’ve left what doors I have left (after isolating the cats) open. I’m hoping the bird will leave of its own volition.

At the moment it is in the hall saying
‘meep meep meep meep tweet’.

This is progress. Earlier it was entirely silent. Then it was only saying ‘meep meep meep meep’. ‘Tweet’, I feel is a good sign. A sign of recovery. A sign of new life and perhaps a will to leave the premises of its own free will.

So meanwhile I wait. I cannot open any doors for fear the man/baby substitutes will meet the not-dead bird. I cannot close any doors for fear the not-dead bird will not meander home with an extra ‘tweet’ on it’s lips but will decide to stay and turn into a dead thing. I have a deadly fear of dead things. My deadly fear of dead things has left me in a live-bird in the house situation.

Help.
Meep meep meep meep tweet?