So… There’s this rat. We shall call him Ratatouille – I know, I know, it’s been done before. However, Ratatouille managed to fall under the radar of a little black cat. We shall call her Kiya, because that is her name. Kiya brings Ratatouille indoors and chases him around the house. This is around one in the morning. I am trying to sleep, so I have a few choice words for Kiya.
By two, Ratatouille is squealing and running up and down the stairs with Kiya in hot pursuit with all the delicacy of a three legged elephant with a belly full of scrumpy. As I’m not getting any sleep, I have no option but to try and resolve the issue myself. I close the bedroom and bathroom doors, corralling the two of them in the hallway. I open the front door and try to get Ratatouille to go out. I mean, there’s a door wide open with freedom beckoning and what does he do? He doubles back, bounces up the stairs with the black ninja careering after him, squeezes under the bedroom door and hides under the bed. I have a few more choice words to say on the matter. A lot of them beginning with ‘F.’
This is repeated several times during the night. I have no idea what it was doing to my blood pressure, but Kiya is not on my list of birthday cards for this year.
By morning, I had no idea where Ratatouille was until I put my slipper on. He leapt out and ran under the bed pursued by Kiya.
As I had a day out on the bike planned, I decided to let things play out in my absence, expecting to discover the disembowelled remains laid out on the stairs ready for my return. Except that when I got home, the cat and rat game was still underway in the bedroom as evidenced by Kiya sitting patiently at the edge of the bed waiting for Ratatouille to make another break for freedom. Until, that was, Ratatouille did make a dash for it and headed for the stairs. For some odd reason, Kiya doesn’t pounce while on the stairs, so, given the idea by the rat himself, I got a slipper and put it down in front of it. Ratatouille went in the slipper, I grabbed it and took it outside. The rat gets to live another day, providing he keeps away from Kiya.
So, I keep a cat and have to do my own ratting. And she brings them in for me to practice. At least, I think that is what is going on…
Tom and Jerry !
Very much so.
She obviously thinks you need some training in rat catching ?. I bet she spends the day catching up on her missed sleep.
She does. Little git.
OK here’s my rat story. I was emptying a compost bin, which is stored in my laying chicken run and unknown to me there was a rat nest in the middle of the bin. As I shovelled the pile of rotted chicken manure into bags for putting on the garden the rat nest was uncovered. At the sight of the baby rats the chickens went completely mental in a similar way to how they react to ‘chicken crack’ (mealworms) and rushed over to the pile and ate every single baby rat they could find. Rat nest problem solved.
Not all cats are good at rodent control. Some are brilliant but I remember one cat when I lived near some docks who had to have rodents pointed out to her as rodents were, for the cat, too much effort compared to just wandering over to her food bowl.
I hope you’ll be docking her pay!
Get a Jack Russel. Or a monkey with a hammer……………..He won the ratter challenge decades ago. The problem was getting the hammer off the monkey.
One of our cats once brought a live magpie into the house and let it go. Fortunately it flew out when we propped the front door open.
Remember – Kiya thinks you are a troublesome kitten who refuses to hunt. You are being trained.
All your efforts and lost sleep have simply proven her point.
Say “Meow” now Longrider.