Rat and Cats
And the rest of us

How to get rid of rats? Traps, poison and glue failed to work ^[details]. So I went to the cats and dogs asylum "Vetluv" and got myself two cats. After a day we found the appropriate names: Nice and Nasty.

Left: Nasty. Right: young Nasty defending the food tray spitting with high tail and back, but lost it.

Young Nasty was hiding immediately, and easy to scare into an aggressive posture. Nice, constantly between all of our legs, older and stronger, was not shy of replying in kind if necessary. They clearly were most uncomfortable with each other. Nasty started to jump off the boat and sleep in the swamp. I decided, why? Don Quichote defends the weak? A vague intuition that Nice was, after all, the nastiest? to swap Nice for a little one. Vetluv's Dora agreed this was the most promising swap. She had two 4 week old brother boys, but did not want to separate them. Should I take them both, I asked. "When they grow up they will start to fight". With one sitting on my head and the other on hers, she decided: OK take one.

Left: Roland started to sheet the harbour shores. We keep an eye on the pile-drivers, we make a new harbour gate which has a cloth-with-stones algi barrier, hung at floating jerry can-supported bamboo and supervise the dumping of soil brought by trucks, while Middle: Roland at daytime runs in his solidly defended TOOLS & MACHINERY shop in Kabalagala. Right The shop's building at Kabalagala, his own. Roland (72) is the only one entering the store rooms and handling stocks. Roland: "good exercise".

We were not particularly waiting for shore sheeting, but all the rest of us is delighted!

Sorry, we're FULL

The new poles enable us to turn the gangplank down. At night it is a rat gateway. But one morning finding it up, I thought Philemon had tied it, I stepped up, but it was not tied and went down. I was close to falling off board. Monkeys, Mashabala discovered a few days later.

Mlawatu (Kiswahili: man eater) has replaced Nice, meanwhile I got, after 5 years on Lake Victoria, my first bilharzia, so both of us gratefully savour NIDO's fortified nutrition supply

Mlawatu baptizes himself: Mlawatu took a liking for the stern. We decided to see if he would know his limits and go for rescue only in case of failure. He slid off but we were unable to jump before he had reached the shore, no doubt his first ever swim, straight, to our amazement not only to the shore but even exactly to the gang plank, which, after a small pause of reflection he walked up to be lifted inside and dried.

It took some days, Nasty seemed to have been a bit traumatized, but peace established, and we
do a lot of jumping after, over and under each other, as well as joint cry parties for mincemeat.
Right: Nasty with dead rat (caught by Philemon)

Rats are down significantly, Nasty caught one, Philemon two, Mlawatu still only practicing tiger stalk.

Taken 9 month later, Mlawatu became the big shot, Nasty modestly complying, We bring our frog to our food plate! Next on Cats, My Picasa, featuring all my best Cats & Monkey pics