It happened last year, in 2024. Well, for the most part in 2024.
In September 2023, one of my cats, the one called Sivka (You can see her in my recent post about Piko the Hedgehog), brought a rat into the house.
Sivka does it fairly often, but unlike previous rats, which were dead or half-eaten corpses, the rat that will inhabit the kitchen sink cabinet was alive.
At some point, Sivka released him, as cats sometimes do, to play with him like with a living, moving toy, and I caught the moment to save the rat and bring him outside. I mean, that was the plan, not exactly what happened. The rat survived, but the "bringing him out in the yard" part didn't work out.
I was chasing the litlle rodent around the kitchen, the butterfly net was in my hand, while Sivka sat in the corner, visibly entertained by the chaotic scene.
At times, it looked almost like I could be successful, but nah, rats are fast and agile, even cats must put plenty of effort to catch them - I had no chance.
At some point, the rat entered the narrow space behind the stove and cabinets, so I gave up.
The back of the kitchen sink cabinet is open, connecting him with that mysterious part of the kitchen I rarely clean and see.
The next morning, I put small chunks of apple and carrot in the kitchen sink cabinet and closed its door.
When I opened the door in the afternoon, the food was gone.
I continued doing that routinely each day for a few months, and then slowly, I started to feel the need to make a post about the situation.
A good post needed pictures or footage to show and prove what I was planning to write, so I had to find a way to catch the elusive rodent on camera.
Not once did I see the rat in those first months, only heard his activities behind the kitchen elements. In the following two photographs ...
... you can see how I prepared the camera to do the job for me.
The cabinet's interior is a dark place, so I mounted a clamp lamp on the cabinet's door and positioned the lamp in a way that allows the door to be almost completely closed once the camera and lighting are ready for the task ahead.
Here you can see how the scene looked from the outside.
The illuminated interior looked pretty cool when seen through the overflow hole.
The camera was recording the kitchen sink interior for a couple of days, for a couple of hours each day.
In the following video, you can see that footage combined with some soothing free-to-use music I found on Pixabay. This is the most important part of this post. That's what all the work and preparation were about. Have a good viewing.
When it comes to the name of the species, the rat was a Rattus norvegicus, commonly known as the common brown rat.
The rat lived for a year and a half in the cabinet and behind other kitchen elements that form a compact row close to the wall and a narrow open space between that row and the wall, one of the very few areas my cats can't reach.
The rat was permanently under siege.
With the brown rat's life span of up to two years in the wild, it is safe to say that the Rattus norvegicus in my kitchen sink had a fairly long life, after all.
One day, in January 2025, another of my cats, the one called Palchich this time, caught the rat when the rat left his refuge for a moment.
AND THAT'S IT. THE POST ENDS HERE. AS ALWAYS HERE ON HIVE, THE VIDEO AND THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE MY WORK. THE MUSIC IS SOME FREE-TO-USE STUFF I FOUND ON PIXABAY - THE END.