A rat! A rat in the arras!

Our tom cat Baron, aka Bagger, is to be congratulated on the scientific capture and despatch of his first brown rat (rattus norvegicus) known in France as le rat surmulot, rat de Norvège or rat d'égout. He - and we - have been observing this rat for some time, as it was competing with the ground-feeding birds for scraps falling from our bird feeders under the cherry tree. The goldfinches having vanished, there are now fewer seeds tossed aside by these greedy birds in their pursuit of sunflower seeds, but then the hen pheasants that were gobbling up most of the discards have vanished too. Both goldfinches and pheasants are now no doubt sitting on eggs out in the meadow somewhere.

This looks tasty....

 Ms Rat (for she was a female, not lactating) was a plump beast with a glistening coat, having had the benefit of an excellent diet under our bird feeders. Were it not for the diseases the rat is known to carry, one could call her a handsome creature. Bagger was on his way into the house via the back door when movement caught his eye. He shot across, waited until the rat moved, then pounced, caught it cleanly by the back of the neck, and brought it to the doorstep unharmed and kicking furiously for us to admire it, before putting an end to it cleanly with a single bite. Death by skilled cat or terrier seems to me a far kinder method of disposing of vermin than those devised by mankind - Warfarin (die slowly of internal bleeding), Rat Glue (die slowly of starvation while stuck to a board) or Rat Skouiz (die slowly of suffocation tangled up in a rubber band). At least the old fashioned "Little Nipper" trap or tapette is reliably quick - unless the rat gets a leg caught in it... And a humane trap is all very well, but what do you do with the rat once you've caught it? Well, we rewarded Bagger with cat treats. Now for the really big target - ragondins!

It was! Now, where's that cat?

Bagger is really rather an unusual cat. For one thing, he roars. You know that "mad five minutes" that strikes a cat occasionally, sending it racing round the house in several directions simultaneously? When he does that, sometimes he lets out a brief, guttural roar. Then he looks surprised.