My Mother has a pet mouse. It’s white. She calls it Whitey.

It lives in a pissy little wire cage on the end of the kitchen bench and feeds on breadcrumbs, which Mum breaks off and pokes through the wire every morning. But Mum’s away right now and I couldn’t be assed feeding it so Whitey has taken to eating his own shit.

Another thing I couldn’t be assed doing is cleaning out this little wire house of shit. And there’s plenty of it.

This is a miniature ghetto slum. The floor is littered with tiny pieces of ripped newspaper and excretion and nibbled-at food scraps. All it’s missing is a drum fire and a pimp.

Whitey has a wheel as most good mice do and it squeaks at a different octave than he does.

This is Whitey’s day. Wake up, eat some shit, roll in the paper some, try and squeeze through the wire cage, jump on the wheel. And around. And around. And around.

And get off. Sleep. Wake up, eat some shit. And on it goes.

I know how Whitey feels.

Whitey ain’t your wild house mouse that was caught in a trap. Whitey’s a mouse bred for entertainment. Born to be eye-candy. Raised to be enclosed and stared at.

If Whitey wasn’t in this shit-can little cage, he’d be in another someplace.

My mother picked him up from a pet store in the city after we lost Dad, chose him because he was the most active of what was there. A healthy looking rodent, the fittest in the flock. The one the other mice seemed to look up to, seemed to admire. Whitey was a mouse with a future. A mouse going places.

Back then the cage was a gigantic fish tank that ran along the shop’s entire front wall. This was your veritable mouse playground – spinning wheels, rock caves, cushion beds, twice-daily feeds of cheese and bread.

Darwin’s theory has a reverse. It’s where the strongest is picked off from the bunch and kicked in the nuts.

This morning I check in on Whitey’s cage; make sure he’s ok for turd. He’s off the wheel, curled up in the corner, nose to ass, his fur rising and falling around his chest. I spot some red dots on the newspaper floor that ain’t ink. It trails from the middle of the cage to the back of Whitey in the corner. To his tail, which is red and raw and ripped open and chewed on. Whitey is nibbling now. Like a dog chews its back for fleas. All teeth and spit.

It’s amazing what boredom’ll drive you to.