25 May 2009

The Cat Sat on the Rat (Warning, this is revolting)

…But not hard enough – yes, Harry brought us in another live young rat some days ago and laid it down. Although injured, after a moment or two it declined to remain recumbent, and ran for cover in the front room, yelling defiance. Harry found this quite upsetting.

I wasn’t mad keen, either. And I don’t suppose the rat was very happy, come to that, but it did have its revenge later. We both tried to catch it, and in the end I moved quite a bit of stuff around, in an effort to stop it doing something unhandy like getting behind the fish tank, or the books. No luck, anyway, so we both gave up in the end. Harry subsequently brought me a dead rat – his intentions are good, but We Have Been Here Before. “I don’t think that’s the same one, is it, Harry?” “Well. It’s as good as, anyway.” Hmmm.

Sure enough, after a while, I noticed that I was seeing more flies about than I would normally expect. Uh-oh…and then we smelt a (dead) rat, quite literally, so one of the Bank Holiday afternoon’s tasks was to locate it and deal with it. And where had it died? Why, in the middle of the stuff I had piled up on the sofa, of course. Most fortunately, we have a large cotton ‘throw’ over the sofa, which contained most of the (ahem) fall-out. Unfortunately, it’s cream-coloured, but thank heaven for washing machines and modern detergents.

Ewwww, gross!

3 comments:

Jilly said...

Cats always deny all knowledge of the one that got away - especially of the one that got away in the house! Well it wasn't my fault if it just followed me through the cat flap . . .
I can remember having to do similar thing with dead mice and come to think of it I never did find the young rabbit that escaped in the house - back in about 1982. Wonder what happened to that??

NAM said...

Oh, gosh, we've never had rabbit! Come to think of it, that's just as well, as round here it would likely be somebody's pet bunny.

The one that escaped in your house must have got out again, or remet cat and been eaten (and I don't think most cats would swallow things like ears or claws), or become a pile of dust somewhere - and as rabbits are herbivores, I think they probably smell less in decay...let's hope for the first of those!

Jilly said...

I wondered at the time whether a cat caught it again and took it outside to eat - hence the absence of nasty smell and the absence of ears, claws and tail.