Something I forgot to add yesterday was the saga of the baby rats. On Tuesday night (during Lost I think) boy cat comes padding in with small rodent squeaking in his jaws. This means it's a rat which isn't good news - mice get scared easily and can be simply picked up and taken outside - rats are bloody quick and can hide under things in seconds - all the time squeaking away. Boy cat drops the rat triumphantly and expects praise - he gets bewildered surprise, as he's six and has never caught anything in his life before this. He's always been a whale until his latest diet which is the first one that's worked, so I guess I'm going to have to get used to this sort of thing in the future! It's previously been girl cat who catches anything the moves and drags them in for boy cat to eat (she once dragged in a live adult rat that was half her size - got knows how she got it through the cat flap).

Anyway, boy cat tortures the poor thing for a while until I trap it in a glass behind the poker chips and dump it outside in someone's garden (in my defence - I don't have a garden :) ). I watch the end of Lost and go and briefly chat to internet girl 1. During this, in pads boy cat with the same rat - dead this time - and dumps it on my bed. Thanks kiddo! While disposing of the corpse I find a half-eaten dead one on the living room floor which could only have come from girl cat as a gift. This means the two of them are hunting as a pair again (which is nice after their regular spats the other year) and have found a nest. What happens next is not really a surprise as boy cat is strutting around looking smug in that way only a cat can, acting like he's still got some bollocks and I didn't have them lopped off when he was a kitten...

About 2am he wanders in with another dead baby rat in his mouth, drops it on my bedroom floor and wakes me up by screaming loudly that I should survey his latest triumph. The dead rat is only playing possum though, and faster than the boy can move it's off! It goes straight under the bookcase in the hall which is too narrow for the cat to get under. The bookcase is too heavy to move on my own so after twenty minutes of jabbing with the poker I can't get the thing to come out, and decide to deal with it tomorrow - detailing the cat to wait for it. He dutifully does as one hour later (during which its squeaking has meant I haven't gone back to sleep) it makes a break for it, he catches it, pads into my bedroom, drops it on the floor and it runs straight under my bed, squeaking again. Git.

I grab maybe half an hour's sleep in total and am late for work as usual the next morning. That evening I move the bookcase but can't find it, I move everything stored under me bed bit by bit (and resolve to dust more) but again I can't find it. I move the wardrobe, the sofa, the other two bookcases - all nada. I hope he's eaten it, but normally that leaves some traces of gore. I'm stumped.

Last night I start smelling it. It's clearly in the flat, and dead. The flat starts to fill with the sweet yet rank smell of putrescence. I sleep with the windows open. Today I've spent several hours cleaning the flat and looking again (and resolving to hoover more as well) but still no trace, and then about an hour ago I went to the bakery to get some fresh bread and notice it smelt a lot more down the stairs and found it festering behind one of the internal doors. It's now in wheelie bin heaven....