Skinned

There are concessions to make when living with someone. Three years ago, my partner and I, along with our two cats, moved in together. The house is located in the lower Laurentians because we both have a love and need for nature to surround us. It’s a lovely house with an open plan and we filled it with things accumulated through a lifetime of acquisitions and travel.
It was a little frightening at first because we both have a lot of stuff. Luckily, our tastes are similar and our furniture and art blended together nicely. I only had one serious objection to overcome. Axel had spent the better part of the 70s living in Africa, first Nigeria and then in South Africa. During those years, he collected many beautiful artifacts but there are a few I could have done without. Along with items like a magnificent Yoruba mahogany mask and beaded bushman’s skirt, he also brought two animal skins - a zebra and a springbok. Knowing they died long ago has not made it any easier to see them stretched out on the basement floor.
From the time I was a child, I had a strong dislike of using animal skins as decoration. My father, a tailor, regularly worked to convince me to allow him to put “…a little fur on the collar” when sewing my winter coat. I could never say yes although I knew it hurt him. To his mind, no fur on the collar was an indication that he was not earning enough to properly outfit his only daughter. So living with these skins means I have to curb my natural aversion. My solution is to walk around them. Even the cats walk around them although I’m not sure it’s for the same reason.
Axel did not kill these animals. In fact, he goes to extraordinary measures to rescue any living thing, be it a fly or a mouse, in order to release it outside rather than harm it in any way. (Killing is reserved strictly for mosquitoes and black flies.) Being of like mind about respecting life has led us to considerable research on how to repel the field mice that find any number of ways of getting into the house. We favour things like steel wool and sonic repellants. But these are beasties determined to get in. When we managed to block the wall that provided access to the cupboard under the sink, they began showing up in the dishwasher. How they got in and out without getting drowned is still a head scratcher. Anyway, we thought we had won that battle. Then last week, Mumzer, our ever efficient black cat, caught a mouse running around the TV as I was watching it. I saw the tiny little thing cowering among the wires. Suddenly, Mumzer pounced but Axel also leapt into action and cornered the cat, firmly but delicately extracted the mouse from his mouth and while I congratulated Mumzer on his excellent reflexes, Axel release the terrified beastie outside.
We were feeling very self-satisfied with our humanitarian efforts until this morning when I lifted the mat on Axel’s side of the bed. It seems that Mumzer has undertaken a project to produce his own animal skin rugs. There, beneath the mat was a flattened mouse skin, little legs to the side, tail curled upwards, headless - a miniature animal skin being cured in my very own bedroom.
“How did it get so flat? Did you squash it inadvertently getting out of bed?” I asked Axel.
“Not likely,” he said, “Looks like Mumzer ate everything but the skin, tail and feet.”
I looked with sadness at the shell of the beastie, then, asked Axel to dispose of it. This is one animal skin I do not have to live with.