I was watering here late yesterday afternoon, and there was no sign of this rat. This morning I found it dead, draped over some poly reticulation pipe, with ants crawling all over it and consuming first the liquid around its eyes, and in the fur around its neck. I eventually came to be persuaded that a cat had caught it, lethally injuring it, but it had got away, to die some distance away and without the cat finding it. I have several undomesticated cats living in and visiting my backyard every day. While this does not please me, the mice and rat population has dropped greatly, since they began having litters about 3 years ago.