Stella Screws Up my Move, Part the First

Stella. It's always bloody Stella. Whenever there's something pressing to be done, Stella's right there to make sure it, well, isn't, or at least not in the manner intended. Take my hurried retreat from the apartment at 438 Seymour, for instance. There I was, everything boxed up and ready to go, just waiting on the movers, when--

--no, wait. That's not the beginning. There was foresight involved, malignant planning, sort of thing. It started weeks ago, when I was giving the cage a routine scrub. Stella, as usual, was biding time in her travel cage. I'd given her an orange to nosh on, and all seemed well. I scrubbed; Stella ate. Time passed. I scrubbed some more. Stella, well, she ran out of orange, and started eating on the walls. By the time I was done with my scrubbing, the travel cage had a hole the size of a fist in it*. Not one of my wee scrawny fists, either. I'm talking a big ol' manly fist, here, with brass knuckles on. And there was my horrible rat, smug as you please, sticking out of the hole like a groundhog in February.

"Aw, sod!" I yelled. But it was too late for imprecations. The damage had been done.

Then, there was the night of the move. I'd got everything boxed up and ready to go. The bed had been dismantled and shoved out into the hallway. The wee pokey bit was off the desk (it won't go round corners with the pokey bit on), and my entire wardrobe was folded, crumpled, and stuffed into the box my dehumidifier came in. The dehumidifier itself was in the solarium with the TV. All that remained was Stella.

Now, Stella, she's not too smart, but she's pointy. Her thoughts go like little pricking toothpicks, right to the heart of the sandwich. She seemed to have decided that all the fuss and commotion could only mean one thing: a disturbance in her peaceful routine. Being of the belief that the best defense is a good offense, she had positioned herself smack bang in the middle of her cage, on high alert. Her eyes were wide open, and she ground her teeth incessantly. (This wasn't the gentle brux of a contented rat, either. This was an aggressive sort of tooth-grinding--a tooth-sharpening, more like.) I fed her heavy slices of malt loaf, in hopes she'd go to sleep, but she spurned my offerings entirely.

"Stella," I wheedled, "you needn't get all up in a bunch about things. We're not going to the vet's, and you're not getting a bath. We're just going on a little taxi ride, and then it'll all be over. Gawn--unpuff yourself. No need for that."

"Hissssssss," said Stella. I hate it when she hisses. She sounds like an angry cobra (or, at least, as I'd imagine an angry cobra sounding).

At the last possible moment, I got Stella out of her cage. She, true to form, slipped through my fingers and went in the closet. I dove in after her, and she evaded me again, this time plunging into the forest of boxes. I banked left; she banked right. I jumped; she ducked. I hopped up on the counter and started swearing like a sailor; she went under the dishwasher and cussed me out in her own squealy way. We went a merry chase round the couch, and made the solarium echo with our footsteps. I, ever clumsy, got stuck between the mattress and the wall. Fur, curses, and a stray sock filled the air. At long last, I swooped down with the travel cage, and--and, well, it's got a hole in, of course, so I jammed her teddy bear in there to keep her from coming out.

It worked, too, for the next forty-five minutes. It worked as I scrubbed down the cage, and it worked as I waited for the movers. It worked when I was running around in the basement, looking for a security guard to lock the elevator. It kept on working as I explained to the movers how to get my unwieldy desk out the door, and it furthermore worked as they wrestled my mattress onto the elevator. It stopped working as I waited for the taxi to Gail's place**--and, as these things do, it stopped working in spectacular fashion.

The minute Stella got a whiff of the cool night air, she went berserk. She must've thought we were off to the vet's, or something, because she tore into that teddy bear like there was no tomorrow. There was so much fluff flying round the cage that the rat was quite hidden. Until, of course, she tore the bear's face off with one mighty bite. There was a sickening tear, a triumphant squeak, and up she popped through the hole, large as life and twice as ugly.

And then--and then the taxi arrived. I bopped Stella on the nose with my credit card and hopped in the back. Instead of being intimidated, unfortunately, Stella was galvanized by my resistance, and began poking up every two seconds, like a stuffed toy in a Whack-A-Mole box. I, at a loss, whacked and whacked, attracting great disapproval from the driver.

"What is that?" he asked, trying to sneak a glance.

"It's nothing! No! Bad!" (Whack!)

"What?"

"No, no, I wasn't talking to you." (Whack! SKEEEEK!)

"Did you make that noise?"

(Whack!) "Yes!" (SKEEEEEEK!)

"Let me see!"

"Drive! Drive!" (Whack, skeek, whack whack, whackety-skeek YEOW!)

...and then she bit me.

We arrived at Gail's in record time--the driver, terrified, really put the pedal to the metal--but it was too late. Stella had gone completely wobblers, what with all the whacking and shouting and jouncing in the back of the taxicab. There was no keeping her in. She was exploding out of that box from every opening, and the movers still weren't there with her cage. Me and Gail, we jammed her in a cardboard box, weighted it down with a cinderblock, and locked it in the bathroom. Even a big stone block couldn't contain her fury, however. By the time the movers had been, and the cage was all assembled, she was running rampant through the bathroom, standing aloft in triumph and, well, pissing on things. Typical Stella behaviour.

With some trepidation, I snatched her up, and the whole horrible misadventure was over, with only a scraggly wristbite and a handful of ratgrease to mark its passing. Of course, the whole performance is due to be repeated in only a couple of weeks' time, so I don't dare relax just yet.

As an odd coda to the whole affair, my old landlord dropped by today to pick up the keys for the Seymour Street flat. He also dropped off something I'd forgotten:

I'd intended a much more grandiose funeral for the smelliest footwear in the world***, but in the end, I settled for flinging it off Gail's balcony, as hard as I could. It sailed across the chasm between buildings, glorious, for a moment, in the sunset, and reached the roof of a multilevel carpark. There, it met its Waterloo. Plunging earthward, it bounced off the roof of someone's car, did a sad little shuffle down the windshield, and interred itself in the middle of a nearby parking space. Perhaps someone will pick it up, take it home, wash the filth from its horrible treads...or a seagull will eat it. Either way, I am, at long last, rid of ol' Emperor Pong. (Indeed, the wee bugger had a name! Should you see him one fine day, traipsing the streets of Vancouver on bacterial feet, greet him, greet him, that his journey might not be so lonesome!)

* There had already been a hole, thanks to a previous attack, but not nearly such a big one.

** I have not, in fact, moved into my new flat yet--the old tenants are still there. I'm staying Gail's until such time as they're gone.

*** Link temporarily offline, due to site reorganization. It will be back soon.