When Herself got a cat last August I did wonder how it would affect our local rodent population.

It’s a common enough sound here in the winter: the scurrying of tiny feet up in the ceiling.  They like it up there because it’s warm and insulated.  Occasionally they have been known to wander to a lower level and I find traces of them around the kitchen.  That’s when I get down and dirty and lay traps all over the place.

One of the little features of living in the wilds is that there tends to be some wildlife.  We get the lot here – cats, dogs, badgers, foxes, deer [but not in the garden], hedgehogs, squirrels and the like.  Naturally the list has to include the odd rodent, so I make no apologies for having them around the place.  I did object to a rat who took up residence under the floorboards simply because he chewed through the central heating pipes.  He is now an ex-rat.

So what is the cat to make of all this?

Up ’til now he has been quite disappointing.  He chases the odd fly and will play with it until it gets bored and flies off.  He takes a certain passing interest in spiders but to my knowledge he hasn’t caught one yet.

Last night he caught his first mouse.

He massacred it.  Bits of it lay around the bedroom floor as a testament to his hunting skills.  The mouse is dead; there’s no doubt about that.  The little fucker knew I wouldn’t be pleased so he hid until this morning, when he got a right talking to.

Herself is livid.

Now she can’t use her laptop until I buy a new mouse.