Butter wouldn't melt

Oh this guy is in so much trouble at the moment.

He looks like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth doesn't he? Don't let those fairy wings fool you. He is the spawn of the devil.

On Friday night, I had just got the kids off to sleep. Richard was out and I was looking forward to a night on the couch with my knitting and a large glass of vino.



He pretends to be cute and funny but don't let him fool you.



You've got the picture. Domestic bliss, nice peaceful evening. But no. The evil little bugger aka Kipper the cat, brought me a present. He likes to bring me live presents. The last one was a mouse and it ran up my trouser leg when I was trying to catch it. This time he brought me a HUGE RAT and dropped it at my feet. What I said to him at that point is not printable. There was about a minute whilst the rat and I stared at each other trying to work out what move to make next before it decided to make the first move and ran under the couch.



Being alone with not a chance at catching the thing, I rang my extremely long suffering neighbours and asked if they would mind sending one of their great strapping boys over to help me. The boys were unavailable (I think they quite possibly refused and rightly so!) so Andrea and Graeme came over to help me. I should mention at this point that Andrea is absolutely terrified of rats, but she is such a good friend that she came to help anyway. We spent the next hour trying to catch the rat. If we'd filmed it, we could have made millions. You couldn't write comedy like this. There was leaping in the air from one side of the room to the other. There was screaming. There were three adults armed with brooms and sticks and there was a lounge that looked like it had been burgled. The cat, through all of this, sat back and looked vaguely amused.



We eventually gave up. Andrea and Graeme went home with my profuse thanks for their bravery and I closed off the lounge and went to bed. I told Richard the story the following morning but he seemed to be under the impression that catching the rat would be far easier with just two adults. For some obscure reason, he also thought that the cat would assist in catching the rat. Oh what fun we had. The rat would win awards for acrobatic ability. We, on the other hand, would not. The mission was simple, chase it out of the door onto the deck. The rat had other ideas. It preferred to run straight up walls, scale the back of the stereo and wedge itself behind extremely heavy wall units, rather than make it's way outside. I was armed with a broom and big rubber gloves. Richard was armed with a totally useless cat.



Richard would pick up Kipper and point him at the rat.

"Go and catch the rat Kipper."

"Um, no, I don't think so, I'm running over this way."

"Kipper, come here. Right. Now go and catch the rat."

"Nah. I'm going to run over here towards the door thank you very much."

"KIPPER. Come HERE. You little sh*t. You caught the rat. YOU come and catch it."

"Oh, no, no, no, no. I don't think so. I am going to run up your body, over your shoulders and out the door. I'm not playing with a bloomin great rat. That's your job."

And so it went on. Eventually, Richard gave up on his duff rat-seeking weapon and we continued trying to urge it out the door with sticks and brooms. Next time we turned around, Kipper had gone to sleep on a plastic bag in the middle of the floor.

We left the door to the deck open all day today and I've spent the afternoon moving furniture and scrubbing. No sign of any small furry creatures so far (aside from the bl**dy useless one who is currently lying on top of the TV) so fingers crossed, it made it's way outside. I hope your weekend was a lot less eventful than ours!