7. The mouse rug

This is a blog about my taxidermy. I have tried to keep it as gore-less as possible, but here you are, a little warning.
Please keep reading under the cut....

The current Small Stories exhibition features a beautiful Miss Miles dolls house (1890s, Friern Barnet). While admiring it during the private view, I was treated to a story by a lady from the V&A conservation department about how, when this house is sent abroad for exhibitions, they need to provide a "passport" to show that the taxidermy is not from an endangered/extinct critter....

The taxidermy piece is a little mouse rug in the downstairs hall by the entrance. Here's my photo:

And here's a photo from the exhibition catalogue, with a slightly different arrangement:

Well, naturally I thought such touch of realism a spiffing idea indeed, and decided to procure a mouse rug for my own dolls house. Alas I'd never done any taxidermy before. I was a squeamish kid, and even skipped the biology class at school when we were supposed to dissect an earthworm.

However...
My friend Magdalene, a costumier from Highgate, recently started posting photos on facebook of her extremely naughty cat Prudence's "gifts" she kept finding on the carpet...  and not just one or two. The beast was on a proper rampage, and photos of adorable little dead mice from a leafy old North London gardens were flooding my wall daily:

Evil catty claw and her poor teeny victims on a vintage carpet with carousel horses

Prudence's fertile hunting grounds

Dear "Butter Wouldn't Melt" Prudence

Magdalene saved a freezer-full of Prudence's kills for my dolls house rug attempts, and one day, armed with scalpel, Borax and youtube tutorials, I bravely went for it.

The first mouse about to be skinned; in honour of Prudence The Cat I named her Patience.

It was a strange experience, and I know you're just dying to see the whole gory process, but I'll just skip to the end result for now.

Here she is in the artist studio room I just started working on:

And here she is in the sitting room:

I might back it on a bit of felt eventually. My freezer is still full of mice to practise on, after all... And, alas, dear Prudence is still very much in the kill mode.

PS My own Howard the cat is sure keen on the mouse rug - I keep catching her tiptoeing into the house with her little nose sniffing towards the top floor! 

Caught in the act... naughty kitty!