Think Big, Live Tiny - Part 11

TRIGGER WARNING AND SPOILER ALERT! This tale is about the demise of a rat. If you are squeamish about such things, you may want to give this story a pass. I will try not to be too graphic, but at the end of the day, the rat didn’t make it. But he did put up one hell of a fight.

It’s Friday morning, my beach day with my friend Douglas. I look at the clock, 7 am, oops, time to get off Facebook and start getting ready. As I stand up from my L-shaped seating area, I hear a familiar “mreow”.

Those of you with cats know that they make subtly different noises depending on what they are trying to communicate. I cringe, as this familiar sound, like he’s talking with food in his mouth, is indeed, just that. I look down to see that Chandler is about to present me with a gift. Standing at my feet, with a large, fat rat hanging from both sides of his mouth, the tail brushing the ground, he repeats his proud cry.

“OUT!” I yell, pointing my finger at the door. He looks confused. What you don’t want my gift? He turns back towards the door. But I can’t leave it alone, now I have jumped to my feet, waving my arms erratically, and I suppose, scaring him. He drops the rat on the floor, and my worst suspicions are confirmed, it’s very much alive and making a run for it.

“Get that fucking thing out of my house!” I proclaim loudly. I’m not sure if cats respond to profanity, but it sure felt good.

The rat is smart and fast, he runs underneath my small coat closet. I can almost hear Chandler whisper “game on.”

To fully understand my despair, this is a re-run of a similar event from a couple of years ago (which you will hear about in a later episode), one that lasted nearly 24 hours. An event where I discovered that rats can hide up inside stoves and refrigerators, and run across kitchen counters – ewww – evading the cat for countless hours.

I called Douglas.

“I don’t know if I can make it to the beach this morning.” I relate the story to him as I stand with a small broom in my hand, not taking my eye off the cat who is trying to entice the rat out from beneath the closet.

“Why don’t you just leave the cat to it, and come to the beach?”

I start to respond that that’s not an option, but then stop mid-sentence…why not? Just last year I went back to sleep after discovering that a volcano was erupting up the mountain from me…perhaps I could leave the cat and the rat to their timeless dance.

The beach was lovely, and on the drive home I imagined returning to a dead rat lying on my lanai, with the cat sitting triumphantly nearby. Alas, it was not to be that easy. The mat near the door was disturbed. The cat was looking at me with big eyes. There had obviously been a scuffle that Chandler had not won. I bent down to observe that yes, indeed, the rat was still hunkered underneath my closet.

After a moment to go over my options, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I needed to get on with my day. I grabbed my small, three-foot, utility broom and tried to shoo him out from his hiding place towards the open door, mere inches away. But only managed to scare him up into the closet. With a sigh, I started emptying the closet, Chandler quickly got with the program and jumped in to help me. As I moved the last object aside, the rat made a leap for it, nearly landing in my lap, eliciting from me a high-pitched, girly scream.

I backed up, waving the broom, trying to encourage him towards the door, but with the cat sitting there, licking his chops (I had not thought this through), he made an about-face and ran over my foot. That guttural scream could have raised the dead. Now he was headed towards my kitchen. I continued to wave the broom ineffectively as I watched him scurry behind the refrigerator.

Damn. This was Deja Vu. I was determined not to let this drag on all day again. I reached behind the fridge with the broom and scared him back towards the door. I should add, that Chandler was still sitting on the carpet at the door, cleaning behind his ears, calmly watching the proceedings.

The rat jumped onto the seating area I had vacated earlier, ran across it, leaped up to the window, and started to climb the screen. After only a moment’s hesitation, I decided RIGHT! THAT’S IT! I lifted my arms with the broom, like a Samurai warrior, and with a grunt, I knocked him off the screen. He fell back to the seat, where he immediately started to run away. The cat was eyeing me and the broom cautiously, he was not about to interfere in this dangerous situation. I was on my own. After several more attempts to encourage him to exit through the door, I realized, with a sigh, there was only one way for this situation to end. A few well-placed whacks with the broom rendered him either unconscious or dead. I honestly didn’t care which.

The cat was now busy looking in the closet thinking somehow, he’d magically re-appear in there. “Stupid cat,” I muttered, as, using a Kleenex, I picked the rat up by the tail and flung him over the fence. I like to think that I just knocked him out, and he ran off far away, lesson learned.

Moral of this story: Don’t get between a woman and her broom(stick).

THE AFTERMATH :-)