1940
I had in my room on the Malecon in Havana for a long time a pet, a white mouse, which I kept in a birdcage. I needed a companion, being alone in my room for two years. It was a very special mouse, somewhat larger than other white mice and quite friendly. I could keep it in my hand and stroke it with one finger and it seemed to like it. Once it bit me and I punished it immediately with a snap with my middle finger against its head and it never did that again. For food it got seeds and it seemed to like it, also bread or crackers and pieces of nuts and almonds. Unfortunately it got quite fat.
I let it crawl into my sleeve and it went up high behind the collar and I could direct it by pressing slightly from behind towards the other sleeve till it reappeared at the other hand. It seemed to like that game and I did it quite often. It was a very clean mouse, cleaning itself almost constantly. There was no smell from it in the room and it never made any noise. The cage was in the back of my room on top of a trunk. This little mouse was a good medicine for me, calming my nerves like a tranquilizer, when I was in despair.
Shortly before Hedy and Johanna arrived in Havana from New York I got rid of that mouse, thinking that Hedy would not like to have it in our room. It was a wrong move, I thought later, as I thought that Johanna would have liked to play with that animal. I took it to the laboratory of Vieta- Plasencia, where I had worked almost daily, experimenting with snake venom.
It was an interesting spectacle when I put the mouse into a cage to the other mice, when they all came from all sides to admire my mouse, almost twice as big as they were. There seemed to be no end to it. They surrounded it and smelled it constantly like a world wonder. When I see how my grandchildren like big and also little pets like hamsters and play with them, I remember my little white mouse, gone for such a long time, almost 40 years.