Surprise Rats, Epiphanies, & Underwear

I've come to a realization.

That whole episode following my break up was upsetting, as those kinds of things sometimes will be. I had a very understanding professor tell me that loss of that kind can often be likened with the death of a loved one. That is very true- I was reminded of the traumatic death of the rat I kept in high school through to college. As ridiculous as this sounds, and as trivial as you might think it makes my former relationship seem, I should probably explain that this rat was sort of like a member of the family.

When I was a kid, I had a habit I picked up from my mom, that was particularly irritating to my dad- which entailed bringing home the various animals I encountered and installing them in our house. By the time I turned 17, I got my license. This made things infinitely worse, because access to a car dramatically increased the number chance of encounters I had with random fauna, facilitated them, even. It also made it extremely easy for me to transport them home.

There was a small petshop in my hometown, and on one particular occasion I decided it would be a phenomenal idea to stop in and look at the rodents. I'd always wanted a mouse, there was this romantic notion in my head of keeping one in my pocket. Instead, I noticed a tank of ugly hairless looking things in a corner.

Darla was a rex, or half hairless rat, and the only girl in a litter of boys. She was so ugly, that when the girl working there told me the litter would be turned into snake food soon if nobody took them, I decided that she was better off with me.

The first 3 weeks of her life were spent residing nightly in the bottom drawer of my dresser, or daily in a shoe box that traveled EVERYWHERE with me. Within the week, my sister knew about her. In two weeks, so did the entire neighborhood. Everybody knew. Except my mother. After awhile, she started trying to fake me out. "I looked in that shoebox today." She would say carefully. "...No you didn't." "...How do you KNOW?!" How? Because if she had, I wouldn't have been alive to answer the question.

She eventually did find out, and immediately wished that she hadn't. She was rather frustrated with me, now that my sister and all her little friends knew what it was that I was carrying around everywhere in addition to the neighbors, while she still did not know. Having spent the last 3 weeks bringing the rat to and from school, and trying to keep the cat out of the room, I was a little weary of the secrecy, and thought that the entertainment value was depreciating- so maybe dropping the charade would be better. Besides, the week prior, Darla had realized that she could migrate throughout the dresser, and as a result I was now severely lacking in underwear and socks. Explaining why I needed to go shopping to replace all of these would be difficult without coming clean. I waited until she brought up the shoe box. Mom was angry, insisted that now she didn't want to know, and started dealing with dinner in the kitchen. My method of dealing with this, now that the underwear situation was getting dire, was to put the contents on my shoulder, and wander around the house (I would later use this similar technique to disclose my new tattoo- and it would be met with even less success).

"Here mom."
"What?"
"Shoe box."
"Wha- OH MY GOD-"

Apparently, the night before she'd stayed up watching a PBS thing on the bubonic plague, and the fact that there was a patchy looking rat in her house wasn't optimal.

Either way, cut a long story short, the rat became a regular member of the family, usually sat on me for meals, and got her own made for her by my mother when I was away at college. My sister complained.

"Mom made eggs this morning."
"Oh?"
"-For the rat."

When she passed away, there was much heartbreak, and I didn't get out of bed for about 3 days.

Cats, Rats & a Brief Animated Interlude

You may have noticed the slowly accumulating cat iconography all over my page. And the frequent references to cats. This is actually inexplicable because 24 years of experience tells me that I don't mix well with cats. At all.

As the least of my worries, I'm fairly allergic. So it makes not a lick of sense that I frequently browse petfinder, look for them, or ask other people to give me one. I like my friends' cats. And they like me for a pin cushion.

I slept over a dear friend's house last year and spent some quality time cuddling her newly acquired (spoiled) kitten. This cat had more toys than a Toys R Us. AND they were technologically fun for humans. There was a thing called a "panic mouse" that I got to be present for the christening of, and it was fascinating. It even kept the cat entertained for like an afternoon. You attach a feather to the end of this thing and it whips it around at whatever speed you want.

Anyway, I slept over and kitten had been pretty calm all day. Right after I fell asleep I woke up in a perceived warzone. The "kitten" had spent his day sleeping, so he was full of energy for the rest of the night and catapulted (hardy har har) at my face and landed paws down, nails out. Alarm clocks are effective, but if you could put a timer on this thing that didn't go off at 3 am, I'd say you'd never have problems with wanting to hit the snooze button ever again. Here's a mild re-enactment, with most of the violence cut out:



Come to think of it, I've had a lot of fairly unfortunate run ins with cats. The first was when I was 8. I had a cat named Holly (We found her around Christmas, and being 8 I thought I was pretty clever matching her name with her "birthday"... I'd shown similar genius a couple years later that when unrecognized by my mom when I suggested we name the dog Petunia. Since it was spring and all.). So we had this cat that was actually pretty friendly. Nice. Aesthetic enough. Incapable of recognizing the litter box but hey, everybody's got something. She disappeared in the middle of winter, and showed up several weeks later in a blizzard. I was decked out in all kinds of dress up clothes (again, I was 8) in multiple layers because it was cold. So I scooped up the cat and brought her to the basement. We hoped that putting her on the same floor as the litter box might jog her memory as to "this is a litter box, use it". A few weeks away, she was more likely to have forgotten than usual but we were optimistic. Whatever the idea was, it concluded with me stuffed into a concrete wall at the bottom of the stairs. One broken arm, two ambulances (the first one got stuck in the snow), a newly discovered (ridiculously uncomfortable) allergy to morphine and 3 pins later, I came home to discover that that cat was no longer taking residence at our house, but with a nice farmer some towns over.

The other incident happened a few years later when I tried sleeping at a neighbor's house. I ended up in the top bunk that night, which was pretty neat, I liked heights back then. By morning, however, the cat decided that there wasn't room up there for the both of us and after a rude, multiple clawed wake up call, I found myself evicted and relocated (rather abruptly) to the floor. Her parents came in because I shook the foundation.

Therefore, there is actually no logical reason that I should have a cat. It's been proven fairly well that I can't handle cats (and in previous posts, children, dogs or even fish). And yet, I still find some appeal in having a fuzzy thing around. Maybe I'll get a rat.