Allotments 4 All

A couple of people on our site think that poison is the only way to get rid of the rats and mice.  Thankfully, most people see the benefit of having cats around.

This morning I found a dead rat outside the pavilion with a bit of its body chewed off.  Don't worry, I didn't take a photo.  ;)  I think it must have been killed by one of the ferals, or Felix.  I am making a point of telling people on the site about it - I even felt like displaying the dead rat on the noticeboard but that would have been a bit gruesome.

Here's a nice photo of Felix and the two feral kittens, Triangle and Janet.  I was collecting rent in the pavilion and just happened to see them all sitting on the mats by the door.

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Well said Betty.

My dog Emily very nearly died when she was 18 months old.  She developed thrombocytopenia and began to hemorrhage uncontrollably.  She was given vitamin K in time and survived, but there was only a matter of hours in it.  There are a number of reasons why she might have developed the condition but warfarin poisoning was one possibility.  (Emily made a complete recovery and live till she was 13, and we loved each other very, very much)

Poison is never the answer on an allotment.  Quite apart from the unacceptable danger to domestic animals and wildlife it's not going to address the underlying problem.  If you have rats it's because they have access to food that they shouldn't have and because they can hide from their predators.  Put your chicken feed in secure containers and strim down the rough areas so the owls and kites can hunt them and the problem goes away.

Rats are increadibly successful as a species and very adaptable.  Within 20 years of the intorduction of warfarin rats had developed immunity, and then when the very much more potent second generation anticoagulent rodenticides were intorduced it only took them another 20 years to develop immunity to that.  Interestingly enough Newbury was one of the first places to develop super rats in the early nineties - and yes, Newbury Town Council still spend thousands of pounds putting poison down on their allotments!

Those cats are beautiful, don't know if they could kill a rat, maybe a fox did.  Don't think they will be feral for too long, think you have tamed them.

Cats will kill rats even cute ones!

Which is good really ;)

Simon, I'm sure you would have been devastated if your Emily had died because of poison, as I would if it happened to my dogs. 

I tried to explain to one bloke about how a cat could die through eating a poisoned rat and he just shrugged his shoulders as if to say "so what?"  I hate this sort of attitude towards cats.  Even though I've never had a cat at home since I was a child I am really getting to like them now.  I don't expect everyone to be crazy about them, but I don't expect them to be cruel either.

While I was stroking Triangle (the feral kitten who is rapidly becoming tame) this morning a plotholder told me that the cats were too well-fed to hunt so I told him about the rat they had caught.

I might fish it out of the bin tomorrow, take a photo and put that up on the notice-board.  ;)