What I learned from catching Mr Ratty . . .

AS A teenager, my son had a white rat. He called the fine creature Ozric, after a band he liked, Ozric Tentacles.

Dan could summon Ozric from many yards away, and the pet would run in loping leaps through the grass and use his pink claws to climb swiftly up his body and curl happily around his neck.

I, too, liked Ozric and it felt cool to walk around with Ozric on my shoulders, especially if there were other women around, because they’d recoil in shockhorror — ‘Eeeeuww’.

That’s why, since we live in the country, I have no problem with the occasional glimpse of a rat near the house. But inside the house is different issue.

And we had a rat in the attic — roaming the low-ceilinged top floor where our grandchildren’s bedroom is, plus a guest room and my husband’s office.

How did it get upstairs? No idea. What to do? My husband dislikes killing things, so he baited a humane trap. He also put a piece of wood across the bottom of the old, winding, attic stair, so Ratty couldn’t access the rest of the house. The cheese would surely tempt him into the chamber — but Rattus norvegicus is very intelligent and rumbled the ruse. The cheese remained un-nibbled, the trap empty.

So it was days before my husband came downstairs, triumphantly holding the humane trap before my face. There was captured Ratty, looking calm inside the Perspex chamber. ‘Hello,’ I said, as his bright little eyes met mine, ‘aren’t you beautiful?’

It was an instinctive response — because he was. Fine brown coat, excellent whiskers, cute little claws . . . and I was almost sorry to say goodbye as my husband put him in the car, to be released somewhere a few miles away.

Call us daft if you like, or irresponsible, and we’ll say even a rat has the right to life. Like Ozric, handsome Ratty taught me this: creatures you instinctively find scary or loathsome can turn out to be appealing, if you let them.