YIKES!!!!

Early morning 6:35 A.M. And I am awake, intuition tells me that something is wrong. So I get up and walk into the living room. Casey our orange long haired Tabby is in the corner of the room standing halfway up the ladder magazine rack looking down at the floor. There's a long skinny tail, no,no,no!
The rat! It's in our home, and we really felt that it was gone! My husband even foam insulated the only hole left in the garage (water heater connection) to our laundry room! But just in case he put a snap trap on the shelf in the cabinet under the hot water heater.

I screamed, the biggest scream I could. One that could raise the dead, but I only needed for my hero, my husband to awake and take care of the problem. And he did awake, but asked foolishly what's wrong?
I calmly say guess.
As I locked myself in the bathroom, but I forget Skipper, hubby reminds me, and I pinpoint the location of our intruder and that he had gone between our easy chairs adjacent to the sofa.
Hubby locked the cat back in the laundry, and opened the front door with the hopes of shoeing the rat out of the front hallway door, and oddly enough it worked!

The one thing that has baffled us both all day is the fact that the shelf where the snap trap was had blood all over the newspaper my husband wisely put under it with a trail of blood that led over the hamper and out the laundry room door, where it stopped. He searched with literally a searchlight to check if perhaps they were two, but no, no other one could be found.

It confused us and still doesn't make any sense since you see the rat had not one bloody mark on him.
And my husband did check him when he went outside near our driveway, which was easy since he seemed to just stop in his tracks, maybe he had internal injuries and bled from his mouth or something. And he sat there next to our driveway for a very long time more than an hour, but then he was gone.
Weird?
It was well after 8:A.M. by now, and most night predators would not logically be around, anybody have any ideas?
I am sincerely happy he is gone, and that we were not responsible for his demise.
I know that sounds strange, but those dirty nasty little critters are living things, and I wouldn't want that hanging over my head, really.