Rising number of rats are plaguing homes like mine in Yorkshire, here’s how I’m dealing with them - Jayne Dowle

Northern Ireland heads this table of terror, showing a 26 per cent rise, with northwest England just behind us at 19 per cent, according to new research by Rentokil Pest Control.

Our quixotic weather provides the perfect storm for rats to thrive, say Rentokil; 2025 was the UK’s warmest year on record so they bask and breed, and sustained heavy rain floods burrows and drainage networks, displacing rats and sending them in search of higher, drier, shelter.

Which in my case, means my kitchen. They get into the food cupboards, so we’ve had to move all the dry goods, flour, sugar, cereals, into sealed metal or glass containers, as a determined and hungry rat will munch through plastic. It cost me a fortune in IKEA.

They’re crafty. They come around the back in the gap between the cupboards and wall, so I’ve fitted tight metal grids over the access holes they’ve made. That was a lesson learned when I found they’d feasted on the pet food sachets.

They scuttle beneath the cooker, where disgustingly, I once discovered they had managed to gnaw through the casing to pull out the insulation, presumably to feather their own fetid nests.

They’ve even been hanging out by the dishwasher; when it sprung a leak, the dishwasher repair man and the pest control man turned up at the same time. It was a farcical scene as they established that a rat had been sucking the wastewater, flavoured with a horrible mixture of gravy, custard and whatever, from the piping.

Our rat problem – definitely more prolific in wetter weather – has been going on for at least seven years. We live in a 1920s house with cellars, across the road from a field and hedgerows, and our bins have no choice but to sit in a shelter next to the house. We might as well put a sign up on the front door saying ‘ideal home for rats’.

And although we have a Staffordshire bull terrier and a cat – with the latter much more successful at killing the critters should he spot one – ‘our’ rats just keep on coming.

Over the years, we’ve welcomed a parade of pest control men who’ve laid baited safe traps near the bins and behind the kickboards under the kitchen cupboards. Fortunately, I make sure my household insurance covers pest control; I’ve heard of people spending thousands on repeat visits, drain surveys and so on.

Recently however, I’ve taken matters into my own hands. If there’s one thing worse than a live rat rampaging around your kitchen, it’s a poisoned dead one festering somewhere. First comes the nauseating smell, then the swarms of bluebottles, then the hunt for the corpse, which must be disposed of.

Prevention is far better than cure. The pest control men advised us to regularly check the exterior of the house for ingress holes and fill them with mortar. Young rats can wriggle their way through a gap as narrow as a ballpoint pen, one warned me solemnly. It’s an ongoing job; rat teeth can burrow through concrete.

Rats can’t be exterminated in one targeted attack, however. If you’ve got them you need to dig in for a long war.

Every morning, I go downstairs and open the kitchen door gingerly; I’m now blessed – though that is hardly the word - with a second sense, one whiff of rat urine, which they scatter liberally as they scuttle, and I know we’ve been visited again in the night. Smelling a rat isn’t just a figure of speech.

So it’s out with the mop and disinfectant and the peppermint oil for the diffuser, a natural remedy shared by a hippyish friend that actually does seem to work.

Rats are neophobic, which means they’re afraid of new things. That includes scents, which distract them from their path. Ours tend to go for a direct route from under the cooker to under the fridge.

My task is to monitor and fill new access holes here with tightly-packed metallic pan scrubbers – they’re not so fond of chewing metal - and should a rat get through, mess with its internal navigation system by deploying a heady mixture of Zoflora and peppermint oil.

Every room downstairs is also fitted with a plug-in ultrasonic rat repeller; some people say these don’t work, but they seem to help in our house and at less than £20 for a four-pack, cheap and clean.

I can’t solve the problems brought on the world by climate change, but I can at least try to take control of one of the biggest problems it is bringing us.