Was sitting in living room with laptop, glass of wine, fire, reasonably calm headspace when heard a scurrying noise by the open door (the sort the cat makes as she does an about-turn upon entering a room and seeing my 2 year old). Casually glanced to the left and realised the cat was sitting on the arm of the chair next to me (also casually glancing to her left) so it couldn't be her. Grabbed dh from bath and he found the bloody thing sitting in the middle of our front room (I asked, "is it big?" and, following a long pause, "don't answer that").
He's trapped it into the room and put a rat trap down and seems confident that that's sorted then! I am a bit hysterical about this because I had a very ill child at new year's (in intensive care) and one of the things they were looking at was whether we lived near rats. He didn't have weil's disease but it's really in my head. We do live in the middle of the country in the middle of a stable and our only near neighbour (in the house adjoined to us) has got rats in his house (refuses to put poison down) but, though we see them outside a lot, we've never had them in the house before.
Ideas? Solutions? Anything? Please . . .