The cat food burglar!

Face it, I live in a very old house...so old, in fact, the main beam of one section is a tree.  I kid you not, back in the mid 1800's (1842 to be exact), they did not call Lowe's or Home DeePot and ask for a beam to be delivered.  They just find a tall and straight tree, wack it down, cut off most of the branches and build a house on top of it.

If you go down into our basement through a trap door in our laundry room:

(no, our house is not that dirty...the picture was taken the day we put in an offer...over 2 years ago), and  I mean YOU...I was down there once, saw the ice trough and the crawl spaces and the 5' high ceilings and that was enough for me, you can peek into the crawl space and see the tree.  I'm not going back down there.

Now, getting back to the story...we are not in the boonies, but we have an acre with tons of mature trees, ground ivy and mice.  Our first summer in this house, we had a flock(flock?) of baby mice who got lost on their way from the pantry to the bathroom almost every night.

Luckily, Andy had a girlfriend who would shoo them into a corner and lift them gently and take them out on the patio and let them go.

Come to think of it, maybe we had one mouse who came in daily for a snack and a ride out of town in Christy's hand?  I don't know.

Back to the story...We have two cats.  Although they love to find mice, they rarely inflict fatal injuries.  Usually they end up fighting each other for the mouse and the mouse gets tired of waiting for them and leaves.  We also seem to go through huge amounts of cat food.

Since we also have a very fat and lazy dog, I started feeding our cats on a high shelf so our lazy dog did not become a fatter dog.

I wondered for a while if those pampered mice were feasting on our cat food while the cats were looking for mice.  Today, when Tony came home from school, he sat down next to Race Car and we may have figured out just where some of the missing cat food went.  Could it be here?

I wonder...

Next on my list tonight...guilt.  Look at this:

and this

and even this

250,000+ fans converge in Pittsburgh today to show affection and admiration for 'our' Steelers.  Do you see my son, one of the most dedicated fans?

No...do you know why?  I wouldn't let him miss school.  Although my personality has gone from an A++++++ to a B+, I still have my anal elements.  Going to school is one.  Good thing we don't home school, I'd never let the kids leave the house!

When Tony came home today and said there were 250,000 people there, I admitted I would have liked to have gone.  He agreed...said it was a chance of a life time.  Now what do I do?  Should I feel guilty (Mom gave me lessons, I can do it!) or hope to cheer the Steelers on to win again next year...when I know better?