I was going to write something more or less substantial today but instead found out what happens when you no longer have a cat in the house. What happens is that you hear a commotion and go into the next room to see your cute little Jack Russell throwing a rat about. A live rat. A large live rat. Our cats used to bring the odd rat they killed indoors. More importantly the smell of cats generally kept them away. Now it’s dispersed, leaving one enterprising fellow to encounter our last line of defence.
Our little Katie has the ratting instinct, but lacks work experience. Instead of snapping its neck with a sideways twist she was chucking the thing up and down. She had succeeded in immobilizing it, as we found when a particularly hefty lob saw it land on the dining room table and stay there, rolling about feebly.
Thing is, we like rats, as a family. We used to keep them as pets. This rat was a scruffy grey monster, not the sleek piebald and champagne little creatures our kid used to nurture in his bedroom. Nonetheless it had the remains of that endearing, vivid and slightly uncanny intelligence they have, a fact I had to register because I needed to look at it while I hit it over the head with something heavy. The dog sat there yapping with an ‘I did that’ look on its face. That job done, we disinfected every horizontal surface. The dog wasn’t much help there, either.
This happened at roughly the same time Patrick Moore’s death was announced. As a non-Buddhist, I’m pleased to confirm that this was entirely a coincidence.
From wiki on Patrick Moore: "He had a particular affinity for cats and stated that "a catless house is a soulless house".
Posted by: Barry Freed | December 10, 2012 at 12:40 AM
Now I can't help but keep thinking of this classic: Rats in my room. From her "Music to Suffer By" and a favorite of the great Ernie Kovacs.
Posted by: Barry Freed | December 10, 2012 at 01:02 AM
Being a Mancunian you should have had a Manchester Terrier. Black and Tan, they were bred with long legs so that in a rat killing contest, they could stand above the sea of frantic rats and pick and kill at leisure.
I had a friend with a Jack Russell who cornered and killed a small rat in his chicken shed. After a vigorous shake he threw it contemptuously backwards over his shoulder. It landed in my friend's face.
Posted by: johnf | December 10, 2012 at 07:26 AM
Aren't Manchester Terriers basically Dobermans scaled down for footballers' wives in Alderley Edge?
Posted by: bert | December 10, 2012 at 09:16 AM
My Dad was briefly convinced that the dog they'd got (under protest) for my little sister was actually a purebred Manchester terrier, and not a general-purpose mongrel who happened to have ended up longish-legged and black and tan. I'd like to say that this misapprehension led to hilarious escapades involving nods and winks and money changing hands in pubs, but my Dad didn't go to the pub much. In fact it led to my Mum saying "I really don't think so" for three weeks solid, after which he dropped the idea.
Posted by: Phil | December 10, 2012 at 12:12 PM
I think I had this in mind: the German version. There's an English version, and an American version. There's also a proper-sized version for normal folk.
Posted by: bert | December 10, 2012 at 04:31 PM
This'll keep most rats, well...human kind, away
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-C02_WfrFA
D-Con for the others
Posted by: Sam Hutchinson | December 10, 2012 at 07:50 PM
The Wiki article on the manchester includes a great deadpan: "When rat-killing became illegal in England rat-pits were supplanted by dining halls or public inns, all of which were infested by rats."
Posted by: KV | December 12, 2012 at 01:49 AM