Josephine's big adventure - a short story

I don't know why the cages I have are deemed suitable for mice. All three of my mice can (and do, on a regular basis) get out of their cage by squeezing between the bars of said cage. I have long known about this propensity of my mice to escape the confines of their (cat-proof) housing - hence the placement of their cage on a rolling cart in the center of the room without anything leaning against it or trailing down off of it so as to "strand" the mice on a sort of island in the bunny room from which they cannot escape so that they do not go roaming about the house on their own. This technique has always worked well for me, so long as I do not leave things on top of the cage, apparently. I made this mistake a few weeks ago, leaving a fabric hammock sitting on top of the cage after the mice chewed off all four of the supports that allow it to hang from the ceiling of their cage. I thought nothing of it at the time but came to regret that decision the following morning when I did my customary head count of the residents of the mouse house. 

Coming up one mouse short of the three that are supposed to be in the house, I counted again. And one more time, just to be sure. Unfortunately, repeated counting did not change the fact that one mouse was most assuredly missing. Josephine had somehow gotten out and off of the rolling cart. As the hammock was also off the the cage and now sitting on the floor I can only surmise that Josephine entered the hammock which then fell off the top of the cage onto the floor below, taking Josephine along for the ride. I had not idea how many hours head start she had on me so I began searching for her all over the bunny room: under furniture, in the closet, and behind chairs without success. This was Monday morning. By Thursday evening I had searched the entire upstairs multiple times over, largely ignoring the downstairs as that is a) difficult for her to get to with two flights of stairs between the upper and lower floors, and b) the domain of the cats, where Mynx and Max regularly hang out. Late Thursday evening, however, we noticed that Max was extremely interested in the closet under the stairs, staring at the crack under the door with unusual intensity. Upon opening the closet we found... wait for it.... nothing. I looked on the floor between my art portfolios where Max had been staring and there was no sign of Josephine: no mouse, no mouse poop, no holes chewed in anything. 

I was about the shut the door when I happened to look at the top of my art portfolio and there she was: Josephine - hungry, thirsty, and probably a bit tired but otherwise alive and well. How she made it from the upstairs to down I have no idea. What I wouldn't have given for a tiny little GoPro mounted on her head to see what exactly she had been up to these last four days. Alas, we will probably never know. I had hopes that Josephine would learn a valuable lesson about the safety and comfort afforded her by a life behind bars, so to speak, but it appears she did not. She was out of the cage again just last night. This time, however, I did not leave anything on top of the cage that could fall off. At least one of us learned our lesson.

Josephine, alive and well, against all odds