Cat-Blogging, Rat-Blogging

Apologies for light posting. The evenings are also light, and the garage needs a complete reorg. When I've got the Cat 5 cable installed I'll be networked out there ... also a couple of other preoccupations lately.

Our house and garden has always had a lot of wildlife - sometimes too much. Bats live in the loft, jackdaws in one chimney. The tumbledryer vent can't be used until the wrens have all hatched. We didn't block all the scaffolding holes on the (externally completed) extension - now blue tits have taken up residence.

When we found rats in the loft five years back we got a perfect black cat - affectionate, beautifully behaved in the house and a ruthless hunter of all vermin. She had one litter and we kept a boy - a hefty tabby. To watch them hunt as a team was an education, although she would occasionally bring in living victims ('I just saw a rabbit by the bookcase').

She disappeared without trace last November - no body. Fox ? Vivisection lab ? Dunno. Her son, never quite as clever as his mum, was hit by a car in February.

We'd also got hens in the interim. Never any problems with rodents - the cats saw to that. But now they were gone and word went round fast.

At this time of year we wouldn't feed the cats at all. They lived on fresh young rabbit. Now look at our garden.





Worse, the hen-run is surrounded by tunnels - dug by rats. When I shut them up at dusk last week I disturbed a big brute - nearly a foot long.

So Thursday night found my eldest son and I lurking by the hen-house, armed with the trusty BSA Meteor .22 and a somewhat underpowered Gat. Sure enough, the rat emerged from the hedge and headed for the house. Missed !

He dived under the hen-house. I moved the house and my son winged him with the Gat - a good shot considering what an inaccurate weapon it is. With hindsight a cricket bat might have been a more sure weapon. I killed it with the .22. Never shot a living creature before, but I'll make an exception for rats. By the following morning the crows and magpies had disposed of it. But he's got mates who tried to eat their way into the hen's food-store (big plastic bin) the other night. I might have to get a better air-pistol for my son.

We now have a new kitten - too small to take on anything yet. Part-Burmese, part something else. Call me a cynic, but I think he looks a bit too chocolate-box to be an effective hunter-killer. We shall see.

Nemesis ?