2 nights ago I awoke to high pitch screaming in the bedroom. As sociable as I am, I reached over my girlfriend and put her light on.
Our cat (one of them, the other has disappeared and is causing us a lot of stress...she's only 7 months you see, but that's another tale of woe altogether) had corned a mouse between the wall and the cupboard. The mouse was on it's back waving its little legs in the air.

It was a big mouse.
I know nothing of mice, but it didn't look like Mickey and it certainly didn't look like Jerry either.
It was, as I said, a big mouse.

Anyway, it was cornered and Homer (that's the cat in question) was pawing it without using his claws.
Homer is a little slow, hence his name.

So, I get up (and the mouse is still screeching like a banshee...or Bono, whichever) and pick up Homer and put him outside the bedroom. I figured it would be easiest to remove him and then put the mouse in a cardboard box.
Homer ran back in.
So I picked him up again and put him out the bedroom. Then when I turned back to net the mouse...it had crawled behind the cupboard and there was no way either Homer or I was going to get at him.

So, I'm telling this story to my collegues the next day and one of them, a female Dutch farming type of a lass, says, when I get to the part of putting Homer out of the bedroom, I quote: "I bet the mouse ran behind the cupboard."

Yes.

"You know," I'm still quoting, by the way, "you should have just picked up the mouse and twisted its neck." And she makes the movement of someone seriously executing a wee mouse.

There is no way I'm gonna kill a mouse.

Next night (that's last night), 2 collegues and I went out pubbing and when we got back to my place...yup...there was high pitched squealing once again. So we go into my bedroom (and my girlfriend is asleep...she has hearing aids which she doesn't wear when she's sleeping and is as such effectivly deaf...unless you open a packet of crisps...I don't know...I just really don't know) and the cat has cornered the mouse in another corner of the bedroom.

Brave and drunk as I was I approached the screaching beastie.

It was a big mouse, so big in fact that one of my collegues, who knows a lot more about mice than I do, said (and I quote): "That's not a mouse. That's a rat. Look at its tail."

So, brave and drunk as I was, I tried to pick up the screaming rat. IT BIT ME. THE BASTARD BIT ME.

I started screaming, the rat was screaming, my collegues started screaming and we woke up my deaf girlfriend.
I picked up the cardboard box (in which Jules, the kitten that's disappeared, usually sleeps in) and scoop up the rat with Homer trying to get in the box with it.
It jumped out. So I start screaming again, my collegues slam the bedroom door shut and continue screaming. My girlfriend starts screaming and Homer decided to retreat under the bed.
I scoop up the rat again, pull back the curtain, and throw the rat out the open window.

Next morning...I wake up and there's a dead rat at the foot of the bed.

I had to get a Tetanis jab and a week's worth of anti-biotics.

Jules still hasn't returned and I think Homer's lost interest in mice altogether.