I was poking around the sunny vege garden on Friday when I noticed I wasn’t alone. A black rat was also sauntering and sampling, grasping and nibbling on salad greens.
In fright, I leaped into the nearest room and snatched the cat from the bed. She sat where I planted her on the flagstone, dazed and befuddled and ten inches from the rat, who carried on munching. Cat stared blindly at rat. Rat stared at spinach. Then cat’s head jerked as her nose lifted and she sniffed left, right, straight ahead, then — ah! She raised her front end and fell on the rat. I turned away in shame.
Could I not have left the rat to its indolent vegetarian meal (and backyard breeding programme)?
Anyway, rat gave cat the slip and half an hour later cat was still weaving in and out of the beans, lettuces, spuds and long grass, hunting. At day’s end she ate jellimeat.
In the morning, though, I found her gift outside the bedroom door.
Of course, the cat might not have committed the crime. The rat might have fallen from a biplane. I sure hope not. I hope it wasn’t this rat.
Rich pickings from the blogroll this week:
Claire commits alchemy with Emily Dickenson and a cheese grater.
Talking of rats, Isabel’s miracle cat-in-exile makes a second comeback.
Helen analyses a healthy writing group.
Talking of cats, the paradoxical one writes up the launch of Sue Wootton’s new poems, By Birdlight.
6 responses to “Things don’t always turn out the way we mean them to”
What a grab-bag of ratties, Isabel. We had a real Ratty once; I was going to forgo a name for the Sales Dept rat but he seems to have snatched ‘Ratty’ too, while your cat, of course, is perfectly named in a rodent-free country. He couldn’t possibly be called Peacocky.
Thanks for alerting your readers to Ratty’s progress. I will load some new photos this morning (groan across the cyber sea). He is sitting up and playing ball!
I am grateful – well maybe many of my cat-feeding problems would not exist – that we don’t seem to have any rodents as I shudder to think of the copious gifts I might receive. Luckily the peacocks are too big for the cats to catch!
Isabel xx
I was quite surprised, myself, Helen, at how ‘lifelike’ the rat turned out I really do feel like an accidental drawer still. If it doesn’t turn out okay first time, successive attempts are ever wonkier.
I love that drawing of the dead rat! You are very talented! xx H
How mysterious and neat your visitor was, Claire. He evidently thought you’d left the fruit there for him alone. My son had a pet rat and it kept us entertained with its ‘witty’ antics.
One morning, one summer, I found that the overripe banana in our fruit bowl had been devoured completely, apart from its skin. For a moment I thought I must have left an empty skin there! And I found a plum with a tiny chunk out of it as if a bird had pecked it, but the chunk was on the bench beside it as if the diner had had to leave the table in a hurry…
We’d had mice before but on this occasion there was a mysterious absence of the patter of tiny poos – and I’d never known mice to eat our fruit. Perhaps we had a fruit bat in tropical Avondale, Auckland?
NEXT morning parts of a kiwifruit were missing and the skin was carefully in bits around the fruit.
I was still perplexed by the lack of poo. But anyway I shut the kitchen windows just in case we had a four-footed trespasser, and that night, when INVITED guests and I were eating our dinner in the kitchen, there was a tiny scrabbling noise and Lindy said ‘Look!’, and there at the window was our rat, attempting but failing to make an entrance…
THE END.