A Valiant Valentine Vexed
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Rat coos.
The rotund rodent sits on top of the dining room table for an unobstructed view of the 56th Street alley. Long, wanton sighs follow.
Tiger looks up at his bristle-haired buddy. “A rose. Why? What? Sniff for whom? Rat, what you on about? You’re babbling. And if our Mom catches you up there, you’ll be roadkill.”
Rat replies with yet another sigh, oblivious to their Mom’s swat. Today, yes, today, he has greater things on his mind.
“Rat? What’s wrong with you? Your furry cheeks look all flushed and your beady eyes look all limpid like what Mom’s trashy novels say. Whatever limpid is. Sounds like something you’d eat from a trash bin and cough up later.” Tiger licks his paw.
Rat blinks his big eyelashes, and hops down from his high perch. In Rat’s mind, the landing, so soft, as if he settled on a cloud. The seventh heaven kind.
“It’s Madeline, Tiger. Madeline.” Rat elongates the name like drinking a long, cool glass of water.
“Madeline? Who is that when she’s at home?”
“You know that house, three doors down on the opposite side of our alley? The white one with those pretty flower boxes?”
“Yeah, I find those boxes very clean and acceptable for my morning ablutions.” Again, Tiger licks his paw.
“Right, well a new human family moved in there. They speak another language, a real pretty-sounding one.”
“Uh huh. I heard our Mom talk to that mom. I hear they’re from a far away place called France.”
“Right, well, the daughter has a pet rat named Madeline. Oh, Tiger… you should see Madeline. A beautiful white rat with a perfect pink nose. And those ears… to die for.”
Rat sighs. Tiger has lost count. Rat happily, gleefully, contentedly flips over.
Tiger rolls his eyes. He’s never seen his buddy act so weird. “Rat, get up. You’re an embarrassment to your breed.”
Rat rolls back over and sits on his haunches. “Tiger, have you never been in love?”
“Love? Like when Mom sings our favourite song, ‘New cookies! New cookie time!’”
“No, silly. Not cookie love. Animal love. Like when you see a perfect cat creature, a perfect female cat creature, and your tiny heart pumps at twice the speed, and your paws get all sweaty, and your eyes get all big, and you feel the need to howl. Love like that.”
Tiger screws up his furry cheeks and bodily recoils. “Uh, listen, Rat, if you’re coming down with a deadly disease, keep it to yourself. I’ve already used up seven of my nine lives without hardly trying, Mom says.”
Rat sighs yet again. “Oh, you’ll never understand affairs of the heart, Tiger. It’s called being lovesick. It’s not contagious, but it is debilitating to those affected.” Rat falls over and rolls on his back once more, all four claw paws limp, hanging in the air.
“Lovesick, huh? And to that I say Y. U. C. K. It looks painful. Nah, you can have it. Just let me know when you’re better and up for a good alley sniff.” Tiger turns and pads away as if his friend is a slice of Gruyere short of a cracker.
Rat scans the house for their Mom, sees the close is clear, and hops back on the table, craning his neck to spy farther down the alley, to see if Madeline is out and about. And sure enough, after a few more sighs, Rat spies her in all her magnificent glory as she perches on the backyard fence, taking in the morning sun.
With bulging eyeballs, Rat hurls himself off the table and quarterback sacks Tiger who was sleeping contentedly in an old Amazon delivery box. “Tiger! Tiger! Wake up! Wake up! Quick. Get Mom! Beg to be let outside. Madeline is outside. I gotta go. I gotta be with my love!”
Tiger grunts, lifts his heavy head, yawns, stretches, clawing the box. “Fine, whatever, as long as you leave me alone. It’s quarter after post-sniffy-post-lunch-mid-morning nap o’ clock.”
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“Right, yes, whatever you want. Just get me out of here!”
Tiger nods and jogs down the hall to his Mom’s office where she’s hard at work pounding laptop keys, mumbling something about an article deadline. What his Mom does never makes sense to Tiger. If it’s not in the endeavor of finding food, catching food, gumming food to death, and eating food, the activity is lost on him.
Tiger jumps the office cat tree and starts hurling cat toys at his Mom’s head. Ping! Pink! Plunk!
“Tiger, stop that now. I’m working.”
Tiger sits pretty and smiles. His Mom returns to the keyboard, pounding.
Bing! Bing! Bunk!
“Tiger, what did I just say?”
Tiger hops off the tree, stands at the door, turns his head, and gives that pitiful puppy-dog eye look his Mom knows is for cookies or a sniffy. With a sigh of her own, she follows him to the patio door, opens it up, and leaves it ajar for the fur ball, so the Door Man/Cookie Concierge toil can stop. Without ceremony, she wheels back to her den, praying for no more feline interruptions.
Tiger grins. “There ya go, Rat. You can now — ”
Rat bulldozes past Tiger, rockets out the door, hits the deck, scampers across the yard, claws up and over the fence, and down the alley before you can spell E. X.C. U. S. E M. E.
Tiger shakes his tiny little head and returns to the Amazon box, praying for the same peace and quiet as his Mom.
At a rat-race pace, madly puffing, Rat mumbles, “Gotta catch Maddy before she goes in. Just gotta.”
Fate on this bright picturesque day is on Rat’s side, for here she be, in all her furry glory, sunbathing. Purple floppy hat, oversized Jackie Kennedy sunglasses, lounging on a tiny Barbie doll chaise undoubtedly a toy accoutrement of said daughter.
Rat stops. Clears his throat, raises both paws, and squeaks out a rodent mating song. “Meep, meep, meeeep!”
Madeline hears the cacophony and covers her ears. To her, it sounds like someone being defanged.
“Meep, meep, meeeeep! Meeeep!” Rat sings. Chest puffed out, nose raised to the brilliant, blue sky.
Madeline can’t take it any longer. She removes her shades and looks down on the cooing rat, and in the most liquid satin of Parisienne accents, says, “Pardon moi, Monsieur le rat. Ecouté. Whoever you are. You might want to get that checked out. I think you’re coming down with a human disease. You sound like you’re dying.”
Rat looks up at his lovely and quickly arrests his love song. Hearts float above, if only in the poor wee rodent’s mind. The beaming sun casts a halo around his angelic one, and he stands in awe of her wonder. “My apologies, Miss. I was merely trying to woo you.”
“Woo me? With that din? Oh, poor rat boy, you need some schooling in the fine art of The Woo.” Madeline replaces her shades and reclines. Her pink nose, daintily dabbed with SPF 60, points to the sun.
“Oh. Sorry. I was…”
Without a glance, Madeline coos, “I know what you were trying and failing to do. My ears nearly bled. Move along now. I believe you are punching way above your kilometre weight.” Madeline turns her head away and falls asleep, snoring an ever so graceful lady snore.
Rat, dejected, bows his head, and lumbers back down the lane to home. It takes all he has to jump the fence, cross the yard, and enter the patio door.
Tiger hears Rat return. The seal point lifts his heavy head long enough to ask, “So, was she all you had her dreamed to be?”
“Nah. The French. Everyone says they are a snooty bunch. Humans, rodents, the lot. Guess everyone is right.” Rat curls up on Tiger’s chair blankie and goes to sleep.
Tiger whispers, “A fur ball by any other name would smell as sweet.”
