19th December
2:10 PM: I went to the canal and caught the biggest rat in the universe. What a brute! He didn’t want to be caught and tried to catch me instead.
Dragging him all the way home was a real marathon but the look on my humans’ faces when they see this magnificent present will make it worth all the effort.
Getting him through the cat-flap proved a bit tricky for it snapped shut on the rat and won’t open again - the creature is stuck in the twilight zone between in and out. I’ll have a short nap then I’ll have another go.
6:11 PM: What an ungrateful lot! No ‘thank you’. No ‘well done’. No ‘what a nice rat.’ Just a great deal of fuss.
I had not been asleep for more than two hours when I heard Skirt scream like she’d been caught in a mouse trap. After a while I felt obliged to go and see if I could help her - but by then she’d phoned Trousers at the office and made him come home. I got into the kitchen just as he prized the rat out of the cat-flap.
“I suppose we have you to thank for this,” he said.
I smiled and purred gently, swelling with pride.
“Well it just won’t do!!” he hollered, glaring at me.
“Won’t do?” I thought. “That’s about the biggest rat in all of Scotland - what do you expect?”
With tears flooding from his eyes, Brat gently patted the dead rat.
“Poor little bunny,” he said.
“Bunny? . . . Ooops! . . . Now I’ve had a proper look, it does have rather long ears. Oh well my mistake . . . never mind - these things happen”
But my humans did mind - big style! In fact they minded so much they buried the bunny with full military honors. Trousers wrapped him in cotton wool and placed him in a box. Then we had a funeral service in the back garden. As the little creature was laid in its final resting place, I sang, “Will ye no come back again.” But my humans didn’t really appreciate the irony. Humans have no sense of humor.
