IVANHOE -- Regina Sayers and her son Philip, 17, returned home around 10 p.m. July 9 to find the family's gray tabby, Gunther, outside preparing for his familiar role of mouse executioner.

Gunther, though, wasn't toying with any old brown or gray field mouse.

Much to Sayers' surprise, her cat's prey had a whitish-blond coat and tell-tale pink eyes -- the marks of an albino.

"We were just amazed," Sayers said.

Before Gunther could complete his deadly deed, Sayers shooed him out of the way and called Philip for help in corralling the Hollywood mouse look-a-like.

Using his cell phone as an impromptu flashlight, Philip provided enough illumination for his mom to spot the mouse again.

"I put the toe of my shoe on its tail and wouldn't let it go," Sayers recalled. "The cat was about to get my leg, too."

Philip then grabbed the mouse's tail with his fingers and the pair had the unusual critter subdued.

"I think it squirmed a little, but after that, it pretty much just laid there," Philip said.

With time to take a closer look at their discovery, Sayers said her initial hunch proved correct -- the rodent was a wild albino field mouse.

Sayers snapped a few photos of her unusual find and found a contact with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries for a professional opinion on her discovery.

The trained eye confirmed her excitement.

"It does indeed look like your cat found a young albino deer mouse," said Lou Verner, a wildlife diversity biologist, in an e-mail response to Sayers after viewing a digital photo.

"It's the first one I've ever seen, and as I mentioned, it's not very likely that such an animal would ever be seen in the wild," Verner continued. "In addition to being rare to begin with, mice in general don't live very long and an albino's chances of surviving would be that much less. Quite the find!"

Sayers' husband, Garland, gave the rescued mouse its Stuart Little moniker, and the Sayers had the star attraction in Ivanhoe, a small community in Wythe County.

Sayers said she invited her neighbors to come see her furry find and e-mailed the digital photos to other family and friends.

The mouse had suffered some injuries from its encounter with Gunther and was bleeding slightly when the Sayers captured it. A neighbor provided a home -- an old plastic hermit-crab enclosure.

Stuart appeared to be settling into his new digs and even ate a meal or two, but all the excitement and the wounds suffered at the paws of Gunther proved to be too much.

Although Sayers said she wasn't sure what she planned to do with the extraordinary mouse long term, she said she was sad to see him die.

When Sayers and Philip initially grabbed the albino mouse away from Gunther last week, Sayers said Stuart had his front paws clasped in a way that made him appear to be "praying 'Please don't give me back to the cat.'"

So despite Stuart's untimely death, Sayers said she's glad he had a more peaceful end.

"I gave it another chance at life. He had a lot of attention."