as this shows, cats are not great at catching rats. they are fantastic mousers, but an aggressive rat can do real damage to a cat. cats are actually more likely to ignore rats altogether
That rat could have been mauled to death and had his guts torn out easily. One brave rat. I have seen a cat playing with an inside-out rat once.
When cats are well fed they are useless when it comes to vermin, but take a starving cat, and that rat would be history.
