Where’s the rat?

Felix, you rat-catcher. I’ll have one of your nine lives.

-Shakespeare, paraphrased by me.

At about 5.15am I was woken by a kerfuffle. Felix had already had his breakfast at 4am, so it couldn’t be him dropping hints. Something skittered across my bedhead. Felix walks across the bedhead, knocking things down as he goes, he doesn’t skitter. I reached for the light and there was Felix with a rat in his mouth.

I had heard a rat gnawing at something in the roof space during the night. I hoped it was the blocks of rat bait it (they?) was chowing down on and not the wiring. Trees around the guttering had been cut back, but maybe not far enough; I’ve heard rats can jump quite a distance. The cold weather would be driving them inside. There had been signs of rats in the woodpile. Felix was on their trail.

After watching the chase from my bed with one French door open (Felix carried the rat outside, but came back in before I could close the door) I managed to shut them out of the bedrooms and hallway and went back to bed. In the morning, Felix was asleep on a chair in the sitting room. No sign of the rat…but there was some disarray in my study. With a sinking heart, I realised it was probably behind something. I resolved to get ready for the day as usual: shower, exercises, breakfast, chores, before investigating further. I dressed in trousers which were snug at the ankle.

When Mum reported that a rat had been under her chair before running into my study, I fetched my head torch, brush and pan, and donned gardening gloves. Then I began to pull out the shelf and drawer units from under the desk. The rat appeared – each of us recoiling in horror – and disappeared. I fetched Felix (sleeping on Mum’s bed by this time) and set him to the task. There was chasing and to-and-fro, and then nothing. Felix got bored and wandered off.

I eventually cleaned out under my desk – finding only a long-legged spider – and put everything back. I summoned the courage to put my feet under my desk to write this post.

But where is it?