This evening has been a fairly typical one, our seven month old miniature poodle brought in several shards of broken flower pots that our cats had knocked off the garden wall. The hunter cat then brings in a young rat and starts playing football with it. Dog wants rat, so cat (with rat) jumps to a place that the dog can’t reach . Not wishing to be outdone, our enterprising poodle goes back into the garden and returns with a perfectly coiled dead adder (OH now screaming ’ “There’s rats and snakes - Do something!”).
Meanwhile our other cat is watching apparntly transfixed, but also disdainfully as its brother knocks the dying rat around my library. No point in trying to intervene and dispose of the rat until cat has lost interest (but also OH doesn’t want rat blood on her mother’s antique Persian carpets).
Eventually hunter cat gets bored and returns to the garden, superior cat now begins playing with what remains of the rat (tail and one hind leg). Hoping the rat hadn’t been poisoned by a neighbour, I scrape up what’s left onto a dust pan and from the balcony catapult it into the Lot.
