When I returned from a week in Baltimore visiting my daughter, my cat sitter said, with a look of disgust, “Your cat eats flies.”

I felt a surge of pride and reached down to scratch Pepper behind the ears. She figure-eighted around my ankles.

“There’s no accounting for taste,” I said.

I love living close to nature, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have boundaries. Every animal defends its territory, and I’m no exception. The space within these walls is mine. 

The walls I’m talking about are the ones erected inside this barn I call home. The loft was converted to living space 50 years ago by hippies who were good with hammer and saw but not too concerned with sealing every nook and cranny. The exterior barn walls are porous – good for drying hay, but not for keeping out critters. The interior walls are insulated and relatively tight. But between the two are countless gaps and cavities accessible to nature. And below, the dry laid stone foundation and sliding doors of what used to be horse stalls admit all manner of rodent. Those same stone walls are also home to a large colony of garter snakes, who can be found warming themselves on the field stone patio by the front door on any given sunny summer day. That took some getting used to, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and no doubt they eat a lot of mice.

The mice they don’t eat sometimes find their way into the space I defend. It used to be worse. During the first year, I battled them with traps and poison with no apparent effect. I discovered why when I finally moved the old upright piano out of the kitchen. It was ridiculously heavy, so I disassembled it in an attempt to lighten it up. This proved futile – the weight was concentrated in the massive cast iron sound board – but in the process I discovered that the inside of the instrument was a virtual mouse hotel. It’s where they lived and where they (at least those I didn’t exterminate) died, judging by the number of desiccated carcasses under the keyboard.

Eliminating this refuge reduced the mouse population – or perhaps merely concentrated them between studs and joists. I’d been in denial about the stains on the kitchen ceiling, but one afternoon, in a fit of madness, I tore it down. Hours later, standing knee deep in mouse shit and piss-stained sheetrock, I eyed the kitchen walls, crowbar in hand. Fortunately, reason asserted itself and I realized I was approaching a point of diminishing returns.

That’s when I got Pepper.

I haven’t seen a mouse or evidence of mice since. Maybe they’re all gone. Maybe natural selection has favored those that carry a boundary awareness gene, and they are content to stay on their side of the wallboard. So who can blame Pepper, her favorite prey exhausted, having to find what pleasure she can in flies and spiders and such.

When the cat sitter left. I emptied a can of Friskies salmon pate into a bowl.

“Good girl,” I said, setting it down.