I've Been Through the Desert with a Rat with No Name

I haven't died. I thought I had, but I was only asleep in a very cold place. It wasn't even all that cold, but my feet were sticking out, and I hadn't any socks on, and--

--well, anyway, I haven't died yet. That, and the creepy noises got the better of me, at last, and I ordered in some rats. Oh, it's pathetic. I live across the street from a pet shop, but all attempts to get there ended in panting and wheezing and ignominious collapse, so I rang up and had them deliver. I didn't think they would, but to my immense surprise, they agreed without any particular persuasive efforts on my part.

I've not got a camera at the moment--some git borrowed mine and hasn't brought it back--so I'll describe them, as best I can:

Rat A looks a lot like Willow did, only with a pointier nose. She's got one of those beak faces you get, where the nose part is longer than the brain part. She's skittish and lazy by turns, and never opens her eyes all the way. This makes her look rather ornery, although the only thing she's bitten so far is my left thumbnail. All rats bite thumbnails, I think.

Rat B is better than Rat A. I know it isn't nice to pick favourites amongst one's pets, but I have. I didn't do it on purpose. Rat B is just better, and that's all there is to it. She's your classic hoodie: white, with a thick band of colour up the spine, and over the head. In this case, the colour is that of sunbleached sand, the kind you might see during a vacation on Capri. Her eyes are a deep brownish-red. She's got a short, flat nose, like Willow had, and like Stella. If she didn't fit neatly into the palm of my hand, she'd look a lot like Stella, in fact. The shape of her skull, the flare of her ears--there's a real facial resemblance, there. The only drawback with Rat B is that she hasn't got a personality. All she does is sleep, and poke things with her big, flat nose.

Their names aren't really Rat A and Rat B, of course. I just haven't thought up proper names yet.

"I'm terrible at naming things," I told Virge, describing my attempt at naming Rat A. "At first, I was going to call it Worm, because nobody misses a worm when it's gone. Then, I decided that was a stupid name, and a morbid reason for using it, and decided to use Hairy instead, because rats are hairy. This one already haired up my white knit shirt. After half an hour of that, I realized Hairy was also a godawful name, and considered Noseworthy, Gnagaren (the Swedish word for "rodent"), Doss Cunt (too embarrassing during vet's visits, I think), Hoser, and Horrible. I like the way "Horrible" sounds, but this particular rat is the antithesis of horrible. I also thought about the usual array of floral names (Lily, Daisy, Rose, Stinkwort, et cetera), and the usual operatic names (Elvira, Violetta, Musetta, Amina, Zerlina, Despina), but couldn't find one that fit."

Virge suggested philosphers' names, but I've already run through most of those with previous rats. There were the two hairless brothers, Plato and Socrates (remind me to tell that story, some time, about Socrates and Hemlock Street); Nietzche, the hoodie with the overbite; Kant of the thousand and one names (Kant find the door; Kant control my bladder; Kant stop chasing my tail)--oh, there was even an Aristotle in there, somewhere.

I sought Frits's counsel, as well, but something was wrong with his e-mail box. Or maybe it was my e-mail client. I've switched to Thunderbird recently, and it's all mighty confusing.

Maybe I'll call both rats Stella, and hope that one day, when they're full-grown, they'll add up to her imposing mass. Maybe if one stood on top of the other, and I fed them loads of crisps and soda-pop.... (No, no, I wouldn't, I swear.)

I hope my mother doesn't find out I've bought them. I couldn't really afford them, after Stella's monumental vet's bill, and Mother, she was right on my back about it. "People who've not got money for themselves shouldn't be spending it all on pets! I know what you're like. You'll get another rat, and then the minute it gets a wee cold, that's you spending two hundred dollars on it. No more rats! No more!"

Mother, see, she's never lived alone. She doesn't know about the creepy noises, or about that foiled feeling you get when you've finished a drawing or beaten a difficult videogame, and there's nobody about to brag to. Having no immediate prospects of marriage, or even cohabitation, I must have murine company.