The Deptford Mice - The Rat Lair

Does anyone else remember The Deptford Mice? This series frankly terrified me when I was a kid, and was the most unforgiving, horrifying thing I've ever read. It was like the siege of Munster (nice photo there) or Pol Pot's Cambodia but with anthropomorphised piratical rats and wussy mice and happening beneath our feet, all the time. You know that bit in Star Wars when Obi Wan gets struck down by the baddies, and the way he reappears as a sprite at the end? How it's moving and touching? In the Deptford mice, nigh on every last character is killed, and they all appear as ghosts, tormented monstrous ghosts, slave to a bloated, demonic cat. Equally tormenting was the idea of a leading character being chased down by an Owl, and eaten, and his friends finding his bones amidst the pellets. All those daft Duncton moles and Watership Down rabbits had nothing on it for childish visceral horror. Only Sendak comes anywhere near for.