Well, lucky you. Our's MO is to stand in the (spotless) litter tray and hang his arse over the edge to crap. He'll then climb out and drag over anything he can find (shoes, dustpan brush etc) to bury the turd with.
He has a catflap, but I think he's embarrassed crapping in public.
I can tell you, that animal is well past it's "best before" date. Must invite Adam round for tea.
If you look up the RIP act, football hooliganism act and a number of others, you will find that there are a worrying number of cases where a reverse burden of proof is now enshrined in UK law.
Air pistols can only legally be up to 6 ft/lb - so even less latitude. An air rifle at near contact distance for example will kill a rat, but the pellet won't even exit the skull.
The Cat rarely uses the tray now, much prefers to go outside unless the snow is more than about 6" deep. But this is a cat from feral farm stock, not a house cat.
Does seem to be the wrong approach. Old towel, gently drapped over cat, slowly gently pick up cat and slowly wrap towel around cat so the four wavy things with multiple pins on the end are trapped inside. A lot easier to say, than do of course but far better than chasing cat around the house dress in battle gear. Regular handling of cat helps as well, even if it just a couple of strokes of the head, get it used to being briefly picked up if possible, any struggle gently let it go.
The only one I have shot was not exactly tame, but certainly was on its last legs and not as frisky as it ought to have been... It had been trapped under the bathroom floor of my last house, along with a mouse. No idea how they got there, but for several weeks you could hear them having occasional attractions. It eventually became clear that one or more of them had been escaping temporarily down a gap by the boiler feed and return pipes into the kitchen and onto the top of a row of (isolated) cupboards. So I stuck a humane trap up there.
Cue phone call from SWMBO one evening when I was over at a clients site:
"there is a rat in the kitchen on top of the cupboard!"
"has it gone in the trap?"
"Its bigger than the trap!"
"What is it doing?"
"nothing - it looks really dopey and is not moving much"
"ok, keep it talking, I will come home and have words with it"
Anyway, when I got back it was still there. Obviously a diet of boiler control wire insulation (a whole different story) had not being doing it good. So not knowing how aggressive it was going to be - coupled with its fairly fearsome looking teeth - I decided a small lead weight behind the ear might be the best solution. I rejected the pistol on the grounds I really did not want to get that close to it, and also did not want to miss and shoot my boiler feed or return! So opted for the rifle. It was too close to use the scope effectively, so since it seemed docile enough I offered the barrel to the side of its head while it obediently sat there. Seemed to do the trick, fell over, shuddered a bit and expired. On the down side it then decided to bleed down the door of the kitchen cupboard above the sink which did not win me too many brownie points from the management.
When I was making that Oak Coffee table in the winter I made the mistake of attempting to reduce the level of quagmire outside my workshop[1] by chucking down a dustbin load of planer shavings to make the patch of lawn a bit more walkable on. While this it did, it also meant that later in the year the cats decided that this sufficiently resembles a litter tray.
So now even though most of the shavings have gone / been mowed etc, I still have to watch where I tread to avoid the kitty treat carefully wrapped up to look like a chocolate log rolled in Muesli[2]
[1] cf recent thread on paving slabs etc.
[2] Try not to think of that when tucking into your bowl of Alpen tomorrow ;-)
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