I crawled off to bed early last night, leaving Meda watching the rest of a movie we had started.
I’d been asleep for nearly an hour when her screaming woke me up.
I flew out of bed and down the hall. Meda was there pointing towards the closed door leading into my bathroom and saying something about Annie, the smallest of our eight cats but the only regular hunter among the current cohort. So I peeked into the bathroom. There was Ms. Annie, sitting proudly on the tile floor. Next to her, a not insubstantial rat, very much alive and very scared.
Meda had watched her stroll into the house carrying said rat in her mouth, apparently to impress us. Perhaps for a late evening snack.
I just pick up smaller rats and carry them back outside, but I don’t go after bigger ones like this with bare hands.
I returned to the bathroom armed with a small plastic container and a recent Mother Jones magazine. The rat was scared enough that I was able to quickly trap it under the overturned container, then slide the magazine underneath as a floor, and headed outside with rat scratching around trying to escape. As I stood on the steps, I asked Meda to get her iPhone and take a picture, which follows.
The dark shape is the rat, with its long tail extending out towards the camera.
I walked out to a corner of the yard and let the rat run off into the dark. I don’t think there were any cats in immediate pursuit, but a head start is all I can promise.
You can, of course, click for a larger version of the photo.
I’ll be back a little later with a more substantive entry.
Very fitting that a rat is trapped on top of a magazine inscribed,”WTF, GOP?”
Isn’t controlling rat and mouse populations one of the reasons for having cats?
Yes, but…we prefer not to directly observe Ms. Annie doing her job. She’s usually quiet and efficient, leaving just a few tell tale parts in my shower to be cleaned up.
Too late. The rat was already ruined by exposure to Mother Jones. Should have just put it out of its misery.