There’s life in the old boy yet! (Although not much in this rat).

I thought the woman who feeds me would be pleased with this irrefutable evidence of my keen observance of housecat duties. But you know how it is with people, they’re unpredictable.

Before I go any further I make a formal apology to Cat-the-Rat and Starsky over at Rattitude.

It’s not every day, not even every month, that I manage to bring down something of this nature. Let’s be real, catching a wind-blown leaf is difficult enough and really takes it out of me.

This isn’t an Australian rat, it’s the widespread and abundant Black Rat, Rattus rattus (or Roof Rat, responsible for London’s Bubonic Plague in 1665), an unwanted rodent usually found in the compost bins in my neighbourhood. I don’t expect to see the people who live round me suddenly go down with the Black Death, but this specimen here is definitely a pest and not someone’s pet.

These rats are capable of producing ten or more young every three weeks under ideal conditions. A breeding base like this leads to rapid overpopulation and allows them to exploit optimal conditions in the aforementioned compost bins.

What else could I have done?

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This cat lives with Sun Shujun, in Yantai City, China and, for some reason known only to herself, she has adopted a rat which appeared around the time her kittens were a week old.

The cat is reported to be feeding the interloper.