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The dawn of morning over the mansion means two things: for one, the cats are about to go to bed. For another, the humans are crawling out of their nests. The former is a great win for the rats, the latter not so much. Which is why most of them are scurrying to their little hidey-holes in the attic right now.
Since the humans have yet to accept his generous offer of beans in exchange for diplomatic immunity, the trash rat, too, is scuttling towards his dumpster.
He whistles as he hops. The maid ‘forgot’ to take out the kitchen bins last night, which he managed to raid after an intense plastic bag gnawing session. He’s pretty sure she did it on purpose. Maybe she knows of his existence. Or perhaps Papa Caspacito put her up to it; the two of them always seemed close. The point is, his belly is full and the air outside uncharacteristically mild for late September, which means his dumpster will be lovely and moist and not about to freeze his balls off when he–
The trash rat halts mid-hop, three legs in the air. He twitches his nose. Then he does it again, in case wriggling it around sharpens his olfactory acuity.
The thing is… he’d be the first to admit that he doesn’t have the best of sniffers. The only reason he’s the first to find all the garbage is because it generally tends to stink, which the other rats in the mansion seem to have a weird aversion to. Therefore, they run away from it, rather than towards it. It doesn’t bother the trash rat – more for him, after all – but when it comes to actual food that hasn’t gone bad yet, or literally anything else, he might as well be smell blind.
Except right now, his schnoz is tingling like he stuck a fuzzy dandelion up his nasal cavity again. The scent mark is so thick it beckons him like flashing lights behind a country fair food court. Pungent. Dominant. Most of all, it’s his own.
The trash rat lowers his paws to the ground and furrows the one eyebrow that did not get singed off in the Great August Steam Pipe Incident. He didn’t find any crumbs under the children’s desks or apple cores in the dust bins last night; nothing that warranted spraying all over it. Did any of the leftovers from previous weeks grow legs and move? More importantly, could he still eat them?
Well, probably. There are a lot of steps between growing legs and growing a brain, which any badger could attest to. Not coherently, but still. Hmm.
The trash rat turns up his ears. No heavy footsteps rattle the floor boards as of yet, which means it’s probably safe to stay out in the hallways for another few minutes. He changes direction. If his food has run off, he needs to know where it has gone, or plans to go next.
He hops along, ducking under a side table and then squeezing behind a vase, before hurrying around the corner.
He finds himself in front of two massive doors. One of them leads to a room the humans don’t use often, which means it’s basically become a highway for the colony in the attic. The second is a bathroom, which the trash rat avoids on principle. He doesn’t want to accidentally get clean.
Unfortunately, his walking meal seems to have other ideas, because his scent leads directly into it. He scowls to himself and approaches the tiny slit the rats have gnawed into the corner of the door.
To chase or not to chase… Ah, screw it.
He wriggles through the gap.
Cool air greets him, stale with age. The bathroom looks like all of the others around the house: there are a sink and a bathtub, both of them dangerous sources of personal hygiene, plus a toilet. That one is good for providing valuable water when the other wells – like the drain pipe under the kitchen tap – have run dry.
Apart from that, there’s nothing. The trash rat fans out his whiskers and tastes the air. His scent’s definitely lurking somewhere around here.
Then he hears it: a soft wheezing sound. His ears perk up, rotating to make out the source of the noise.
It’s coming from behind the bathtub.
There’s a way into the walls there. The trash rat doesn’t use it, because he has cred with the cats and doesn’t need to bother with the labyrinth of tunnels. But the other rats often transport materials and snacks this way to avoid the humans catching them. The trash rat scratches his nose.
His food grew smarter than he gave it credit for, if it had the brains to hide out here. Hopefully it hasn’t developed a hankering for tasty rat meat or something, because he knows how that ends: on a ship out in the arctic ocean, with a dead wife back home.
Wait, no. That’s a novel.
The trash rat rounds the tub and comes face to face with another rat. One much bigger than him, with sandy brown fur and big blue eyes, wrapped up in a skimpy maid dress like a black and white liquorice treat.
‘Marty!?’
The other rat jumps and whirls. A big grin spreads over his cheeks. ‘Trash rat! How are you doing?’
He drops the loaf of bread he’s pulling towards a hole in the wall and approaches, sticking out his nose. The trash rat sniffs him on instinct and gets another face-full of his own marking scent. It makes his whiskers burn.
He remembers where it’s from, now. Last evening, when the night was young, Marty gifted him a tiny trash can lid as a hat, which had made him go really warm inside. When he’d tried to return the favour by giving Marty two inedible glass bottles, he’d kind of… let his excitement get the better of him. His scent ended up sprayed all over the floor, Marty’s pop-up vendor stall and Marty himself, too.
Apparently, he’s yet to wash it off. Interesting. How very, very interesting.
Marty lets out an enquiring little squeak. ‘What are you doing here this late? Or early, rather.’
With anyone else, he’d be able to tell by the odours still clinging to their fur, but with the trash rat, the stench of garbage is too strong. He’s pretty proud of that one. Anonymity achieved.
‘Just headed back to my dumpster,’ he says, tapping his claws on the tiled floor. ‘Catch some zzz’s, if you know what I mean.’
Marty nods. ‘Cool, cool.’
The trash rat’s lips curl. ‘Or, you know. I was going to do that, but then something in the hallway really caught my attention.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah.’ He draws out the vowel, rolling it over his tongue. ‘Something I didn’t except to come across just sitting out in the middle of the house, doing who knows what, covered from head to toe in my scent.’
Marty’s eyes widen. Red floods his cheeks. But no matter how much he flinches, there is no way around the facts. He got caught in someone else’s spray several hours ago and he’s still wearing their mark, that’s not something any rat would casually allow. Not even within a pack. Not even if they care as little about being clean as the trash rat does.
Walking around like that, uncaring of who comes within sniffing distance… At that point, he might as well just lift his tail.
The trash rat smirks. ‘Oh, Marty,’ he purrs. ‘If you like me that much, why didn’t you say so?’
Marty retreats, palms up. ‘Now, wait a second–’
‘There’s no need to wait,’ crows the trash rat. ‘No time to wait.’
He takes a step forward and the other takes a step back, like a dance. Except then Marty’s shoulders hit the loaf of bread he was trying to shove through the tunnel entrance earlier. He yelps. ‘Stop! Trash rat!’
The trash rat rises onto his hind legs, sniffing behind the other’s ears. Their whiskers brush. ‘You’re sending me mixed signals here, Marty-boy.’
Marty jerks away. ‘That’s indecent.’
‘You’re indecent,’ the trash rat counters. He sits back on his haunches and smirks. ‘Don’t tell me it wouldn’t give you ideas, if you smelled a pretty little thing parading your mark all over, Mr. Five-Hundred-Kids.’
He leans in, letting his breath whisper across Marty’s face. ‘You want it. That’s what you’re advertising. Oh, woe is me, I’m so desperate for a thick, hard–’
Marty, red as a tomato stain on a cutting board, stomps his paw. ‘Stop that!’
‘Bit too late for that, now that the whole colony has gotten a nose-full of you. You better wag that loose tongue of yours like your life depends on it, if you wanna get out of this one. See ya!’
Snickering, the trash rat turns and scurries out from under the tub. He makes it to the door just in time to sneak out as the first human stumbles in for their morning ablutions, leaving behind a flustered, crimson-faced Marty.