Feeding & Nutrition

The freezer has a shelf I don't mention at dinner parties. It holds a flat packet of frozen mice, pink and curled, bought for the corn snake my son talked me into three birthdays ago. Kevin, the snake, eats one every ten days, and the mice sit next to the peas and the bread, a fact my mother finds hilarious and my cat finds fascinating.

The cat, Mavis, discovered the packet the way she discovers everything, by sitting on the freezer lid and staring until someone opened it. The first time the door swung wide and she saw the little pink shapes through the bag, her pupils went from slits to saucers. She has never caught a mouse in her life, indoor cat, but the instinct was instantaneous and deeply personal.

Thawing a mouse is its own small ceremony. You don't microwave it, the books are clear, you put it in a sealed bag in warm water and wait, and you do this where the cat cannot see, because a cat that has decided the freezer contains prey will camp there with the patience of a statue. I learned to thaw in the utility room, door shut, snake food on the down-low.

Feeding Kevin is quieter than you'd think. He strikes, he constricts with the half-hearted enthusiasm of an animal that knows the mouse isn't going anywhere, and he swallows it whole, lump by lump, while I try not to look and Mavis yowls from the other side of the door, convinced she's missing the hunt of the century.

The odd part is how normal it becomes. A frozen mouse next to the peas stops being strange. The cat's obsession stops being funny and starts being logistics, a question of where the bag lives and who might open which door. The snake, serene and unbothered, sheds his skin on the heat mat and waits for his next pink parcel like a lodger who pays in silence.

I wouldn't say I love owning a snake. I'd say I understand the appeal now, the low drama, the long gaps between cares. But I keep the mice on the bottom shelf now, behind the veg, and I've taken to labelling the bag in thick black marker, because the one time a guest reached for what they thought was a pack of sausages was the one time I nearly lost a friend and a freezer drawer at once.

Kevin's shedding is its own small event. He goes opaque, eyes like blind marbles, and then a day later the old skin peels back from the head like a sock and he slides out new and slightly shiny, and the cat, Mavis, goes frantic at the glass, convinced the snake has been replaced by a fresher model. I fish the shed skin out with tongs and bin it, and the household returns to its strange equilibrium for another month.

My son, who begged for the snake with the fervour only a seven-year-old can muster, now mostly ignores Kevin, which is honestly how reptiles like it. The snake asks nothing of him, demands no walk, no ball, no apology for chewed shoes, and in a house loud with a dog and a cat and a boy, that quiet might be the selling point nobody mentioned. Kevin pays in silence, and we pay the electricity for his heat mat.

There's an ethics question I dodged for a while, the frozen mouse, the life taken for a pet that could, arguably, not be here at all. I've settled it the way most keepers do, which is to say I don't settle it, I just make sure the mouse is humanely sourced and the snake is well kept and the cat stays on the right side of the freezer door. Perfect conscience is not on offer. A warm meal for Kevin is what I can offer, and I offer it.

The peas, incidentally, survived the whole affair untouched, and the bread on the shelf above the mice has never once been confused for a snack, by cat or child. I relabelled the bag in thick black marker after the guest incident, and now the freezer has a shelf that reads, to the uninitiated, like a small confession. The cat still sits on the lid. The mice still wait. Kevin still eats. We are, all of us, creatures of habit.

I've made peace with the freezer shelf, and with the cat's obsession, and with the quiet reptile in the spare room who asks so little and gets so specific a meal. The packet of frozen mice sits by the peas like a fact I've stopped explaining, and the household, cat and snake and boy and me, runs on a set of arrangements stranger than I'd have chosen and milder than I'd have feared. Kevin sheds, Mavis watches, the peas wait. We are, all of us, creatures of habit, and the habit, finally, is a kind one that asks nothing of the guests.