An Irishman's Diary

THE CAT had just polished off yet another shop-bought meal at my expense, albeit the cheap Lidl stuff she seems to prefer over more expensive own-name brands. Now she was sitting in our back garden, performing her post-prandial ablutions. Which, despite my lingering resentment at the way she unilaterally adopted us as her new owners several years ago, hanging around the back door until we were guilt-tripped into feeding her, I always find rather charming.

In fact, the entertainment value of the cat at her toilette – that mixture of elegance and precision with which she licks her paws and then wipes her face with them – is about the only thing we get in return for all the food and shelter and the hot-water bottles on winter nights. But looking on, I was reminded yet again of the old story about why cats wash their paws after meals (because a cunning bird once shamed its would-be eater into doing so beforehand, thereby escaping).

And in spite of myself, I was smiling indulgently at the cat through the patio door, when suddenly I noticed that she and I were not alone. The cat had noticed too, because in between wipes, she was studying the small, plump, brown animal that had appeared before her. At first glance I thought it was a hedgehog. But no. There, in the cat’s direct line of vision, not four feet away from her newly-washed whiskers, was a rat.

I don’t know by what miscalculation the rat had stumbled into this situation. I only knew that it must surely prove fatal. The rat seemed to have reached the same conclusion. It was making no attempt to escape: merely cowering, at a right angle to the bigger animal, as if presenting its neck and inviting her to get the business over with quickly.

Puzzled by the rat’s immobility, I remembered the cat’s super-power. Even at her now advanced age, she has a stare that can burn holes through the glass of the back door every morning until she gets breakfast. If I’m having my own breakfast, I sometimes try to ignore it; avoiding eye contact by, say, holding up the newspaper. But unless the paper has a 64-page election supplement, or something of equal density, her gaze can still penetrate.

Surely this explained the unfolding scenario. The poor rat was hypnotised, like a deer in headlights. And it only remained for the cat to move in for the kill, a moment she was delaying, presumably, for reasons of sadism.

The tension built. Watching from the White House situation room, as it were, I almost didn’t want to look. But like Hillary Clinton, I forced myself. And on closer examination, I noticed that the cat was hardly staring at all. Her expression had no urgency whatever. On the contrary, between wiping her face and looking at the rat, she was also taking in other distractions: a breeze blowing through leaves, a passing fly, etc. Meanwhile, the rodent still cowered, waiting for the end.

Any sympathy I had for the stricken creature soon gave way to impatience. “Get on with it, cat – I haven’t got all day”, I shouted through the door. Whereupon the cat looked around with a quizzical expression. She seemed unsure about what was required: as if troubled by a vague folk memory that the rat was a problem of some kind and that, if mishandled, the situation had the potential to reflect badly on her. But how to handle it? More likely, her expression was saying: “I’m not wild about that chicken flavour. Any chance I could have tuna for supper?” In any case, with another glance at the rat, she finally got up. Then she walked past it, slowly, into her house.

Whereupon she proceeded to have her afternoon nap.

The shame of it. I had to chase the rat away myself in the end. And maybe it was its surprise at being alive, but the sluggishness of its departure suggested that, for any self-respecting cat, never mind a practised ratter, it had been there for the taking.

NATURALLYI blamed myself for overfeeding the cat and spoiling what nature had designed as a rodent-killing machine. Then I remembered an e-mail I received a few weeks back from a Dublin reader, Brendan Butler. He was responding to a column about brewery rats. On which subject he was an expert, having started his working career – back in the late 1950s, aged 14 – as

the “cat feeder” at St James’s Gate.

It was the lowest of the low in Guinness jobs, he recalled when I rang yesterday. Even so, somebody had to do it. This was still the era of wooden vats, which were more susceptible to rodent activity. Thus, the brewery saw fit to employ a small feline army: vat cats, rather than fat ones. And yet the point is they were fed.

Brendan’s tour of duty, morning and evening, involved filling the many milk containers spaced out around the vats. After lunch, he would also distribute leftovers collected from the brewery chef, “the best of fish” often. Despite which diet, his charges did their job. He doesn’t remember seeing many rodents while he was there. Then the wooden vats were replaced by stainless steel ones and, at a stroke, the jobs of cat and cat feeder alike (not to mention cooper) were gone.

Perhaps importantly, Brendan recalls that his ratters were semi-feral: former street cats supplied by a local animal shelter. They certainly weren’t pets, he says. And this is perhaps where our cat falls down. She seems to have been well brought up, unfortunately. Which may explain why her hygiene is so impeccable, but also why she’s useless at anything other than washing her face.