Doyle:..our rats are low-
Cordy: Rates! Our rates are low!
Doyle: It says 'rats'.

• Rodents:
  Rats - 1
  Mice - 22
  Voles - 6
• Birds:
  Sparrows - 4
  Dunnocks - 1
  Uncertain - 2
• Other:
  Frogs - 1
  Unidentifiable remains - 2

Aw, my little boy is all growed up, with his first rat kill. He lost his collar on Friday and I failed to get one fixed onto him on Saturday. He's a big cat and he doesn't like it. On Sunday, I came downstairs and convinced Séba to wear a collar (black velvet with glass studs) by getting him before breakfast. Then I saw something under the coffee table. I thought it was a toy or a shoe at first glance, then realised that that really wasn't an old shoelace.

Clearing away a rat corpse is far more disturbing than the little stuff. There's a weight to the body, and a feel of flesh to it, which smaller animals lack. Also, a bit of your brain is thinking "It's a rat! A rat! Plague!" even as my rational side is reminding me that a) it's a brown rat and only black rats carried the plague and b) I've put on the rubber gloves for this particular task. And washed my hands very very throughly afterwards, as if I wear about to perform surgery.

Then there's the matter of praising the cat. Obviously, one less wild rat snuffling around the rubbish bins is good and I do deliberately try to get cats who might be killers because it's far nicer than putting down crystals to liquify the rats' innards. So whilst a bit of my brain is wondering if I can bear to handle the clean up, my mouth is saying "good boy, well done". Yet I don't want to encourage him too much in case he meets a rat that fights back (and an infected rat bite is not fun to deal with).

Hopefully his new girly collar will ensure the rat kill count does not rise too quickly.

--

Meanwhile, over at Shiny Shelf, we're having a shiny advent. My first one is up, a brief review of Brazil. So far, the advent has covered Nightingales (a black sitcom), Brazil (a black movie) and It's a Wonderful Life (where the protagonist is planning to commit suicide over Christmas). Future advent mini-reviews are likely to cover action movies, ghosts and alien invasions. We're a cheerful bunch.

Labels: seba's kill count, shiny, writing