Rats!

 After watching the video of the rat running amok on a subway train, it made me a bit nostaligic.

 It took me back to my college days. The year I lived in a dump. I lived across the street from the college in a house that was divided into two apartments. I lived in the top story with my two roommates, Kathy and Ann. The apartment had three bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. There was no living room. When you walked into the house, you had to walk up the steps. There was a “wall” right beside the stairs, that cut off the downstairs apartment. It honestly just looked like a sheet of ply wood or cheap paneling nailed somewhere to look like a wall. You could press on it and it would move.

 The downstairs apartment was vacant, I believe. I think the landlady’s son stayed there once in a while, but we never hear anything coming from that apartment. Oh, there was noise, but it wasn’t from a human. Although, if you saw the her creepy son, you would probably wonder.

 One night soon after we moved in, and I was all finished painting over the hot pink walls in my room, I heard Kathy scream. Seems that when she walked into the hall from her room to go into the kitchen, there was a rat sitting on the kitchen table. Well, isn’t that special?

 Now, you probably know by now if you have been reading along that I love animals. I think the only thing that really bother me are cockroaches and flies. Flies leave little maggot babies behind and cockroaches=dirty home. Well, that’s what my mom instilled in me. When I was married, we had an ant problem every year. There would be a line of ants coming from the fireplace, across the carpet, into the kitchen, and picking up crumbs on the floor to take back for their ant feast.

 So, knowing there was a rat on our kitchen table was not good. If I lived in a really nice home, I wouldn’t be so grossed out. I know that makes no sense, but this rat was a college sewer-lovin smelly infectious rat. But, I still didn’t want to set a trap to kill it. I told my roommates there was no way I wanted to put out poison, because it would just eat it, die under one of our beds and then its smelly corpse would ferment and make us sick. The place was a dump. I am sure there were dead things throughout the house. Ann scrubbed the kitchen table. I looked at her and said, “Maybe he sleeps in your bed while you are in class.” She changed her sheets and in the morning I saw where she had the bed made up so tightly, an army sargeant would have been proud. Her bedroom door was shut. I laughed because, she also put a couple of towels in front of the door to keep Templeton out. (Yes, I named him Templeton after the rat in Charlotte’s Web.)

 We called our landlord, but sometimes she would pretend she didn’t understand English. She was Italian and personally came on the first of the month to collect from us. She reminded me of a gypsy. Not that I had seen any, but that’s what she reminded me of.  We told her of the rat problem and she said that there were no rats in any of her rental units. “I have no rats.” she simply said, snatching our checks on the way out.

 Well, it was up to us. I came up with an idea. We knew that the rat had run down the stairs when Kathy screamed. So, it had to come from between the paneling and the stairs. So, brain here thought that if we put food at the bottom of the steps that the rat would eat it, get full, and then go to sleep and not come upstairs. That made such sense.

 Well, the only thing we really had in the apartment that evening was bread and potatoes. So, we put about 3 pieces of bread and one potato on the bottom of the staircase and went to bed. I was the first one up in the morning, and rushed to the top of the stairs. Uh Oh. Borrowing a quote from the movie, Jaws, I yelled out, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.” (Jaws came out in 1975, so that was a very popular line for a long time afterwards. My rat experience took place in 1978.)

 The three pieces of bread AND the potato were gone. That was a big potato. The first thing I thought of was that there are either more than one rat, or if he doesn’t like the potato, the whole place is going to smell like rotten potatoes. We had to think up another idea. While we were thinking, I believe several more bread and poatoto nights went by. I think Kathy added some Bugles one night. Everything was always gone in the morning.

 Enter my new boyfriend, (then later husband), Jay. He told me that his sister has a great mouser, named, Sam, who happened to be the biggest bad-ass cat in the county. He thought that he would bring Sam down, let him stay a few nights in the apartment, and see if he could catch the rat.  Sam was big and menacing and looked like the proverbial alley cat.

 Well, that night, I heard Sam meowing. He was sitting on the stairs, looking down between the wall and the staircase. He knew where the rat was coming from. Smart bad-ass cat. I couldn’t wait to see if he would catch the rat.

 Well, better be specific when you wish for something.  I woke up and that cat was sleeping right beside me. Awwww. I know he was probably had fleas and rat chunks on his claws, but he looked so cute sleeping with me. We never had cats when I was growing up. Just dogs. Seeing Sam sleeping snug up against me made me want to keep him.

 Sam must have liked me too. Because he brought me a present.

The rat on the cat

Under his arm was the dead rat. I’m not sure, but I think Sam had been chewing a bit on its head. 

I slept with a rat.  How many people can say that?