A rat in the Arras Bed

Cats...
Batman - a skinny flatsided tabby, brought a rat in to the house to play with later in the small hours of this morning. A large, long tailed, very loud rat. I heard the squeaking and shrieking, in fifty different sharps and flats while I was making date-loaf this morning at around 5.45 AM (Barbs was going to take it in with her) I went to investigate, and foolishly decided the rat was as good as dead, and left him to his chasing it around the tail end of a book case in the hall (rat was just out of reach but would retreat to back of the hidey spot - and he'd go around chase it the other way. I opened a door slightly so Rat couldn't hide there, and went back to mixing and sifting.

Next thing there is an interesting shriek and squeak of an entirely different pitch -- Barbs emerges from the Bedroom a trifle disheveled, as it is hard to be completely sheveled when a large rat has joined you - and the other cat, Duchess, IN the bed.

The rat had, wisely, left before there was a cat fight about whose rat he was, and had left for more salubrious climbs... er climes - in other words run behind the large Lion-witch-and-the-wardrobe style wardrobe, and run up the back of it and was now jumping at the ceiling.

Batman, in the manner of all cats decided his work was now done and it was time for a leisurely wash on the somewhat disordered bed.

I closed the door went off to find an object of rat chastisement and something to stand on - it's a tall cupboard.

But when I returned the rat... wasn't there. Now it's not a very large bedroom and my dear wife who lives in fear of the coming ice age, accumulates clothes. No... let's try for tact. I am a bad provider and the two cupboards and three large chests of drawers are just piteously inadequate. Anyway I have things in one of them. Neither of us are very good at throwing useful clothes away, and one cupboard - the jerseys I think, is just too full, and will keep popping open. As the rat couldn't get out of the room and couldn't be found... we decided it must be in there. Barbs did the most magnificent enactment of the long-arm unpack (a drama in 3 parts or shelves) ever seen by man, or this man anyway, while I waited ready as any terrier, and the cats just did bored and put-upon for being expected to stay for this farce.

No rat. And work to go to, and breakfast and date loaf to be dealt with. We left the cats in there, and dealt with these matters. A little later I went back and the hard-working cats had fallen asleep on the jersey-pile and I looked behind the cupboard, spotted the rat, and walloped him with a broomstick, which was rat-terminal. Cats couldn't even deign to have a look. Dogs on the other hand were nearly beside themselves with excitement as I carried it off to throw away.

The rest of the day was largely spent wrestling with HTML coding STARDOGS to put up on Amazon. This did not go well as I unwittingly converted ALL the dashes to m-dashes (the long ones) early in the process, and had to go back and do it all over again -- because I couldn't fix it, and had done a lot of 'stuff' after that. Ah well. At least there was no rat in it.