Look away now if you are queasy or Why The Size Matters

I love my cats. I really do. Anyone who knows me will tell you, I put them before me and before a lot of other stuff. I decline overnight invitations for fear they'll be lonely and unfed, I rush back from a day or evening out to make sure they have food and are ok, I nurse them when they are sick and cuddle them when they feel like it.

I clean the sofas and floors from their muddy paws and curtains and soft furnishings from their hairs. I put up with cat hair on my clothes and on my bedding and occasionally even on my plates or my food.

There is a lot I tolerate about my cats but one thing drives me crazy. They catch live things and bring them home to chase. Usually, if I hear commotion or a high pitched squeak, I'll come over, with resigned face and no longer even bothered to bring the catchy cup with me, scoop a little unfortunate furry and release it at the back of the garden with a caution to try and not get itself caught again. I'm cross when I have to do this and even crosser when I don't realise one such furry had been let loose around the house and I find mouse droppings and a decomposing mouse some weeks later after a several days of saying "Something IS dead around here, I can smell it, now where IS it?".

I am cross when this happens but I shrug and sigh and resign myself to this fact because, after all, they are cats, that's what they do, and I don't want to limit their access to the house, it doesn't seem fair, it seems cruel.

After tonight, I am revising this policy and seriously considering giving my baby cat up for adoption.

This is what she brought into the house tonight, and I had to watch it run around my living room and hide under my partner's work bag (That will teach him to leave his stuff on the floor) and when Hermione finally cornered it behind the wood basket and killed it, I had to take it's still warm body out:

This thing was HUGE. Even discounting the tail which easily longer than it's body. I know there are rats in the garden and that they come out in the night and my cats have occasionally even killed some and left them for me on the lawn, but never this big. I haven't even ever seen a rat this big before. It was easily half Hermione's size and she brought him in her mouth all the way through the cat flap and to the other side of the house. I've chased her out of the cat flap with the catch plenty of times before, she KNOWS she is not supposed to bring them in, but I guess this one was just too heavy to hang on to. When she finally killed it and I picked it up (in yellow Marigold gloves) from behind the wood basket, she tried to bat at it and have it run off so she could chase it again. That's another thing, I'm never playing chase the furry toy with her ever again. It gives her ideas far beyond my tolerance level.

So, who wants a cat? I have at least one going spare.