Beady

There are few things that one may find fascinating about kitchen appliances. Surely. Even those fancy ass fridges with the internet on ’em.
Not fascinating.
However, cats apparently are fascinated by things other that those which captivate me. I know this because his nibs spent most of this afternoon and evening staring at the stove.
I’m not kidding. I mean, as I write it’s 12.30am (yes innernet, I am addicted to you) and it’s only in the last little while that the fascination has abated… I got home from church at 9.30pm that’s 3 hours… who’d have thought he’d have such a long attention span?
I was fascinated by his fascination so I opened and closed the oven doors, pulled out all the utensils therein and found nothing of interest to me… but I figured that there must have been a roach or an errant lizard that he’d let get away indoors on one of the occasions where he’d been left with the run of the in and the outside of the flat last week.
Of course, if you’re a cat owner yourself you’ll realise that the fascinating thing about the stove was noteworthy and that patience such as Chino exhibited today is for far more interesting a prey than a common and garden variety lizard or roach.
This prey was warm blooded – mammalian – and no, it wasn’t a mouse.
Mice are so last week.
Blow me down if as I was sitting here on my sofa tweaking my latest site two little beady eyes and half a dozen whiskers didn’t appear, attached to a rodent doing a tightrope walk along the little shelf rails in the grill.
What the rat couldn’t see (yes, a bloody rat) was that sitting on the bench to his left, looking into the top of the grill through the stove top was ‘Chinois the Dogged’ who was waiting him out.
The first time the rat had appeared I didn’t see it but got the gist of events because the cat went nuts shoving is forepaw down between the elements. Beady the Rat having made good his escape didn’t poke his nose out for another half an hour or so… I guess he didn’t count on the cat’s determination…
The 2nd time I he came out I saw it, but the cat must have made a noise (or I did) that scared the little bugger back down the stove so I caught no more than a glimpse… By this time I was actively encouraging the cat to sit on the bench… not usual behaviour…
Finally, persistence paid off… Beady emerged the 3rd and final time at around midnight. This time Chino was prepared and he knocked the rat onto the floor leaped from the great height of the benchtop and followed the rodent under the fridge, knocking its footplate off in the process…
Happily Beady wasn’t quick enough off the mark and Chi got his jaws around him and brought him out into the light complete with Beady struggling for dear life…
I sure hope you’re not squeamish or one of those ‘animal loving’ ‘live and let live’ kind of readers… if so look away now… or skip a paragraph…
Chi wasn’t letting me near the rat. He growled and carried on and took the bloody thing into my bedroom. I personally wasn’t taking any chances on him letting it go to get a better grip and having the blighter take off under my bed so I took my own turn at the rat and at an opportune moment I hit it over the head with my monopod…
Heh.. take that you little varmint…
Then, when the cat was distracted I picked it up by the tail and threw it into the bathroom where Chino proceeded to chase it down and attend to it like it was a tickle me Elmo or some such Top 10 Christmas Gift. (The bathroom’s where all the live prey goes… I figure it’s easier to clean up entrails off tiles..)
Happily, entrails are not currently an issue… the cat doesn’t seem to have figured out that rats are edible.