A mouse in the house

You all know how many fun adventures our kitty, Marcelle, brings to our lives. Last summer, we discovered that mice climb the rain downspout up to our 2nd story deck and, having brains the size of peanuts, decide that is a good place to hang out. Our cat spends hours on the deck watching the birds, soaking in the sun, and now, hunting. The other night, I was getting ready to call it a day and climb in bed. Marcelle was on the deck, and pawing at the door to come back inside. "Perfect timing," I thought, since I was ready to wind down. I let her in, turned off the TV, and the lights, and then heard crashing and banging coming from the kitchen. I turned and saw my cat leap across the kitchen floor cheetah-after-a-gazelle-style and thought "crap."
It didn't even occur to me to start checking her chops again for "guests". After the first time last summer that this had happened, I'd been so diligent about making her open her mouth and say "Ah" before letting her in the house. Now I'd have to delay bedtime and get the new friend out of my apartment.
It didn't take long for Marcelle to get bored of flipping the mouse in the air, chasing it and then re-capturing and re-releasing it before she wanted to show me how grateful she was. She picked it up by a hind foot and dropped it in my shoe. Once I saw that it was hunkered down by the toe of my sneaker, I put on oven mitts, grabbed the shoe, and headed for the door. Just as I was opening the door, the mouse leaped from the shoe and scurried under the couch. Marcelle was elated, and I was annoyed.
I stood and watched my genius cat focus on the couch while I thought up my next plan of attack. Just then, the mouse skittered out the back side of the couch and down my hallway toward the bazillion places to hide in our bedrooms, closets and bathroom. Marcelle, meanwhile, couldn't be convinced that the mouse was no longer under the couch and just looked at me like "Shut up, I'm working!" as I tried to show her it had gone down the hall and even picked her up and dropped her near its last known location. I was on my own.
Deciding the oven mitts were definitely insufficient now that the mouse was on the ground, I added a pair of knee-high rubber rain boots. These aided my courage greatly as I went from corner to corner kicking the mountain of stuff we have on our floors (which, oddly, I'd never noticed before I had to search our home for a mouse the size of a circus peanut) hoping to flush the little monster out.
It was 103 degrees on this particular day, and I therefore did not last long at wearing oven mitts and rain boots while working up a sweat running and kicking. I decided to call someone decidedly more seasoned in these matter than myself: Dad.
He said, "Go down to 7-Eleven and buy some old-fashioned mouse traps and put peanut butter on them." I informed him I had a mouse trap; it just turned out to be the catch-and-release variety. He got a hearty chuckle out of my joke and said there was nothing else that could be done. I was exhausted, and Andy was expected home any time, so I decided to roll my bed a foot away from the wall, take my rain boots to bed, and see if a better solution came to me in the morning.
Andy then spent the wee hours of the morning researching, and evidently equally uninterested in going to 7-Eleven in the middle of the night, came up with this:
Bucket
wire with pop can threaded on it suspended over center of bucket like a log-rolling competition
peanut butter on can
ramp, yes, ramp up to the top of the bucket
Then, in theory, the mouse goes up the ramp, jumps on to the can to get the PB, slips or rolls of the can and falls in the bucket. Andy said, "Now what you put in the bottom of the bucket is up to you. Maybe you're humane and put food and some shredded paper down there; maybe you put 3 inches of water." I accused him of created "Rodent Abu Ghraib", but decided the mouse could only be tortured if it actually fell for the trap. The thing is still in my kitchen, now a week later, and still no mouse.
I'm sleeping fine believing it found a hole in the wall and left of its own accord. Or that my cat ingested it. Either of those two options is totally viable, right?
More on our latest, greatest adventures soon.
All my love,
Kelli