Rat B is an Idiot

I had another threatening letter from the bank today. It seems I've not paid my Visa bill in a while, and my chequing account is significantly overdrawn. They're going to take my credit card away and have their collections agents leave messages on my machine, if I don't give them a thousand dollars immediately. Not having a thousand dollars on hand, I forwarded their letter to Rat A, who tore it to pieces. Sometimes, Rat A is worth having about. Rat A is a nibbler. Rat A is destruction in a bottle. Rat A doesn't walk around things: she headbutts them till they move. I like Rat A.

Rat B, on the other hand, has the IQ of an onion. I said she was stupid before, but I had no idea. I mean, this rat plumbs depths of stupidity hitherto unimagined. She does not grasp the concept of edges--the edge of my desk, for instance. I don't know what she expects when she walks straight off it, but the result is always the same: she goes in the dustbin--flump! She doesn't even try to dig her way out. I have to rifle through the papers and apple cores and tissues myself, and fish her out. I tried just leaving her once, to see what would happen. Half an hour later, I began to worry the fall had killed her, and dug her up--silly thing was snoozing in there.

"Rat B," I said; "Rat B, you've got to stop going in there. There's decaying stuff in there, old apple cores, all that sort of rubbish. I mean, it's the bloody dustbin, isn't it? What are you thinking? What's going on in there?" I tapped her on the skull. She ground her teeth happily, and began to suck my fingertip. She just doesn't get it, Rat B. I'm surprised she can even eat without having food put directly in her mouth.

I'm afraid something is wrong with Rat B. She looks healthy enough--her coat fairly glistens, and there's not a trace of porphyrin round her eyes and nose--but there's just nobody home in there. She spends ninety percent of her time sleeping and/or staring blankly into space, five percent eating, and five percent fighting getting beaten up by Rat A. Pull her ears, tickle her nose with the tip of her own tail, muss up her fur, and she doesn't react at all. Well, she might open one eye halfway, but try the same thing on Rat A, and she'll jump ten feet. It's not normal. I've never seen a rat quite this passive.

I'm thinking of calling Rat B "Dead Rat". Rat A, she could be "Other Rat". (Is that any better?)

This is a list of stupid things Rat B has done since I got her:

- Walked off the edge of my desk too many times to count;

- Stuck her whole head in a pop bottle (necessitating an extremely delicate rat-extraction operation, during which I was terrified of crushing her skull, and she just hung there like wet laundry);

- Put her face in a mug of hot tea (again, no reaction);

- Eaten (as in swallowed) several bites of Post-It Note;

- Bitten her own tail hard enough to make herself squeak, for no apparent reason;

- Stood in front of the water bottle, pushing Rat A's head away (Rat A was not amused);

- Sucked an eraser;

- Licked a completely unremarkable section of wall till I pulled her away from it by force;

- Fallen asleep on my shoulder, then fallen off my shoulder.

She's probably done more stuff, too, only I didn't see, or I forgot. I am trying to teach her some basic survival skills, but it isn't going so well. For instance, I tried conditioning her not to eat paper by offering her Post-Its with lemon juice on, but that just made her eat them more. Rats are supposed to hate lemon juice. Why doesn't Rat B know that? Didn't her mother teach her anything?

Neither rat has that low-down, dirty cunning Stella had. I suspect Rat A of a certain bullheaded obstinacy, and a skyvey sort of intellect, but she's not got any sense of humour. She doesn't play games, like Stella did. She steals, like Stella, but she doesn't think to hide her ill-gotten gains. Taking something, that's the end of the mission for her. For Stella, it was just Phase One of a more intricate master-plan.

Rats A and B both stand up on their hind legs and whiffle their noses at me when I'm eating something they think they'd like. They're not very good at the begging game. They don't make me feel sorry for them. They don't make that angry shouty noise Stella did. They don't even yap incessantly, hour after hour, like my neighbours' dog.

Oh, yeah. I'd forgotten to write up my neighbours. I hate my neighbours. They have a small dog and a large toddler, both of whom seem to have made it their personal mission to ruin my mornings. They start up with this earsplitting counterpoint:

Yaaaa-aaaa-ap, ap, ap, ap! Waaaaaa-haaaaaa-ap, ap, ap, ap! Waaaahap! Yaaaaaa-ap! Whahayayayayayaya-YAP YAP YAP! Yappita-yappita! Whaaaa-hoooooooooooo! Yap! Hooo! Yap! Hooo! YAP! HOOOO! YAP! HOOOOOOO! YAP-YAP-YAP! HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-OOOOO!

It's like a foxhunt in pursuit of an express train, let me tell you. Bloody relentless. I've been tempted to leave them a note about it, but, really, what would be the use? Even if they taught the kid a bit of self-discipline, how does one silence a rowdy puppy? I once saw a film, I think, where Jack Nicholson put one down a rubbish chute, but this building hasn't got rubbish chutes. Oh, that mutt!