THERE WAS A RAT IN OUR KITCHEN... ONCE

I don’t know what you think but having a pet, a vicious one at that is a necessity nowadays. That would obviously translate into the canine variety…in other words, a dog, very big dog for that matter. The more sadistic ones would rather keep Lions. With thieves ruling the roost in the suburbs, it has become more than a necessity. After a spate of break-ins we purchased the latest addition to the family. It came in the form of ‘Fluffy,’ a ball of black and khaki fur that could barely scare a fly. The reasoning, nevertheless a bit warped, was that Fluffy would grow into the job.

Our family has a chequered history of owning pets, some, I must add, quite involuntarily. We once had a rat in our kitchen. It must have been a rat because our then six-year-old Anele had announced that he had seen a mouse that hadn’t had a bath. The rat in question placed the family in a dilemma. We were faced with two choices. Either to bait him with rat poison and send him straight to rat hell or just to pretend he was part of the family. And adjust food budget accordingly of course.

The first option was easier but then there was the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Rats to contend with in the form of our three sons. You see this rat was so big that he just could be classified as a pet. It was so big that the kids concluded unanimously that it was a rabbit. And you should have heard the wails of protest as I chased it around the house with malicious intent. My argument was that being the breadwinner; I could never get to make drastic cuts to my monthly beer allocation.

The other option was to upgrade the pest to pet status. That meant coming up with some gentleman’s agreement with the rat in question. Firstly, he had to agree to being a gentle-rat and stop causing havoc in the kitchen. Secondly, the rat would have to adjust its diet somewhat to decent food and not my magazine collection and container of opaque sorghum beer (masese) in the pantry. Unfortunately the so-called rat-rabbit (as evidently opposed to calling him a rock-rabbit) had developed expensive tastes, which explained his weight problem.

The other dilemma was the many a sleepless nights that the rat-rabbit’s nocturnal activities caused. Because of its size, it could no longer sneak out through the tiny hole it came in. So in the dead of the night, one could hear it burrowing away. It was a if it had lost direction burrowing through any wooden surface he comes across. At one point I thought it had discovered my centuries old vinyl record collection. Remember those flat, black, round objects that made music when you set an electrified needle on them?

In the end, quite sadly, some very painful choices had to be made. Would we commit murder most foul and break our kid’s little hearts, or swallow our stingy pride and elevate the rat-rabbit to pet status? I personally preferred a hunting dog having come from a long line of poachers… sorry… hunters. At the time it was a luxury we could ill afford. That’s besides the fact that someone would have to clean up the dog poo. In any case, of what use would be a pet rat that did nothing but eat and poo all day long? I am yet to see a guard rat, granted the mere sight of this chap would surely keep those pesky uninvited relatives at bay.

Relative One: “ Did you catch sight of how big that rat, rabbit, thing or whatever was?”
Relative Two: “I thought I heard it bark!”
Relative Three: “I think I heard ‘them’ calling it by name!”
Relative Four: “We might be strange but these people take the cup. I don’t know about you but I’m out of here!”

Which brings us to our cute Fluffy, the cross Alsatian puppy. Its first act of heroism was to accompany the latest gang of burglars to the back door where they patted him lovingly on the head and made off with our stereo. Just let them come back in three years time, and Fluffy Wuffy will be sure to bite a chunk off their depraved backsides before they grab our Multichoice decoder! Woof grrrrr woof!