Tuesday 6 February 2007

i am a weak-minded fool

goodness me, it's been 2 weeks already. i'm probably taking self-censorship to unnecessary levels here. however i spent much of last week recovering from various hang-overs and i believe all evidence suggests that if you're not safe to drive, you're not safe to post.

however, sobered as i am by all the salacious carnage the world has conjured up in the last few days, it is my skills as a rat catcher that has inspired me to post.

according to Desmond Morris, who knows a thing or two about cat behaviour, the little dears have a few problems dealing with the complexity of human/cat relationships. as domestic cats are descended from mostly solitary cat species, their little catty brains only really have 3 templates to base their relationships on: parent to child, child to parent and competitor to competitor.



so jah is very happy to be a kitten sometimes in order to get fed and have her tummy tickled, but there are times when the fact that she is a rock-hard mother of 9 takes over and she attempts to address the fact that, tho perfect in almost every other respect as one of her offspring, i do not catch rodents.

this is obviously a serious failing on my part. how can i be expected to survive in the real world without this elementary skill? jah frets. and wonders if maybe i'm a bit thick. so she responds in the only way she knows how.

cue screaming rodent dropped at your feet and a look of encouragement bordering on the patronising from jah.

now i have laughed in a smug, human sort of way at this behaviour. silly cat i have thought to myself. trying to teach me to catch mice. ridiculous. but until last night i had not perceived the subtlety of her scheme.

small mice don't present much of a challenge as they are far too much fun for jah not to bat around for a good forty minutes. consequently by the time they are presented to me for training purposes all that is required is that they be taken to an outside bin. this however is but the first step in my indoctrination.

next a very large rat will be brought in and dispatched with terrifying ruthlessness. again my job is purely to dispose of the corpse. jah hides her disappointment that i didn't take the opportunity to practice some neck bites or even a two handed pounce. but she knows what she is doing.

finally a medium sized rat is recruited to the cause. this, jah brings in and then "accidentally" lets go of it for a second. rat, sensing it's fate might not be as tightly sealed as it thought, makes a bee-line for cover. jah feigns indifference. "rat? what rat?". "that fucking rat, jah - the one behind the stereo. get rid of it!"

we then spend ten minutes as i flush the rat towards jah in the hope of her dealing with it. H informs me this is an exceptional spectator sport. sometimes jah can be persuaded to remove the interloper and sometimes she'll pop outside to lick flowerpots importantly and this is where her trap is set.

left with a decent-sized, uninjured rat in the house the only course of action is to don a gardening glove and go after the fucker. after some swearing, furniture recalibration and comical, high-speed twister-style manoeuvres, the rat can then be hurled through the cat flap to make it's merry way off to wherever it likes. prolly the nearest rat bar to relate this tale to some slinky lady rats in the hope of getting laid.

now this has happened a few times without me making the connection. then, last night, the same drill: medium sized rat makes a break for the back of the chest in the living room. i take a look at jah and, realizing help is unlikely to be forthcoming, trudge to the kitchen, retrieve my glove, and catch the rat by it's tail within 30 secs or so. hurl rat as far as possible down the garden in the hope of killing it without having to watch it at the same time. as i walked back up the garden, i registered the expression of pride on her catty face and i knew.

i have been trained to catch rodents by my cat.

the shame. me - top of the food chain and everything. still, good rat eh? still wriggling too.



next week H teaches me to clean the cooker using subliminal messaging.