One of my German language students recently had a mouse in his flat and asked my advice on a mouse trap.  After helping him with the right words I added that the best mouse trap was a cat.  —

Today I told the class about Henry bringing mice into the house to play with them (unappreciative little buggers, they seem not to enjoy his friendly advances).  The student laughed and then asked if I had punished the cat. I was impressed by him using such fancy vocabulary and then tried to explain that Henry meant the mice as gifts to me.  I explained how I praise Henry and then distract him with a reward in order to catch the mouse and send it outside.  He looked at me incredulously.  “Is this a German cat?”  I said yes.  He shrugged his shoulders, in a way that probably meant “That figures!”