Rat

The room was cold. There windows were mostly boarded up, and their allowances led the brisk night air into the house. He slept on a mattress on the floor along with his three brothers. The four girls all slept in the opposite room, also on the floor. Though he was half asleep, he felt the biting cold of the outdoors on his fingers. He was too cold and tired to fully awaken and warm himself further. His toes were numb, and his nose and ears were practically frozen. There was only a thin blanket, and the three boys huddled together for warmth in the bed.

The next morning the cocks began to crow in the yard with the breaking sun, and he stretched out his arms above his head. He wiggled his fingers, and felt a stinging pain. Upon further inspection, the tip of his left index finger was gone, and blood had dried from the small stump down his palm and trickled onto his wrist ever so slightly. 

His mother said that a rat had given him a "nibble" during the night, and she cried for the remainder of the day at how awful their predicament had become. Her children were food for the rats, and were so frozen that not even the severance of a finger could have been felt to them during the night. 

She stayed up all through the night for  two days and guarded the beds, watching her flock sleep to keep them from the rats. She went into town and brought home a big brown tom cat to find the beast, but to no avail. The perpetrator seemed to vanish into the cold just as her last remaining shred of dignity had disappeared since her husband had left all of two years ago.