RatMat not only rhymes, but keeps rodents away for good

Six years. That’s how long it took our generation’s greatest stroke of innovation to become a reality.

It’s not anything you would probably guess, like hoverboards that actually float or holographic forms of communication. It’s RatMat, a rodent repellent — with potential for a brilliant slogan — that its creator Toby Bateson claims to be 100% effective. 

The “mat” of the RatMat is a series of interlocking, steel tiles — all of them measure out to be 31 x 31 x 1.2 cm — placed on a hard surface. It also comes with an energiser to power the tiles. The mat administers a shock that doesn’t hurt or kill a rodent when it walks across the surface, but deters it from returning to the same area. This means you can do without mousetraps’ barbaric ways and the cleanup efforts that result from it.

Bateson created a prototype and spent two years testing how rats interact with the product by placing a bowl of food on it. He claims the invention is 100% effective because no rats ate the food during the experiments, even when it was placed directly next to a rat’s nest for 25 days.

The RatMat’s price goes up as its size increases, and ranges from £49 to £2,299. It can either take the space of a doorway, or a 19.2 square metre area — but if you need something that big, at that point, it may be a good idea to move out.  

Bateson is seeking support for the RatMat’s first round manufacturing with a Kickstarter campaign that has a £65,000 goal.

One of the RatMat’s target customer groups seems to be car owners, since it cites statistics about rodent damage to vehicles in the UK — totalling about 3 million people affected — on its Kickstarter page. The page also mentions using the mat in industry spaces, like factories and warehouses.

So far, the product can only be used indoors — so you’d need to store your car in a garage if you want to protect it using the RatMat — because it hasn’t been tested outside yet, but it is durable enough to be placed underneath car wheels or undergo use in industry spaces. 

Despite the product’s benefits, it seems like the rat-repelling craze hasn’t caught on yet since only £274 has been raised so far with 32 days to go. 

So to save cars across Britain from rats chewing electrical wires, donate to the cause — just £5 will make you an official initial supplier. The usual caveats apply, of course: don’t pledge what you can’t afford to lose, because some projects don’t end well.

Images are a courtesy from Toby Bateson