An Act of Rat-dom Kindness

A quick trip to Wal-mart for doggy chews and people shampoo resulted in a Christmas rodent that Amy and I will be laughing about for years to come.

Cagney the Christmas Rat

Just past the greeter and next to the checkout counters stood a Secret Santa tree covered with yellow tags. Handwritten on the tag at eye level was “Woman age 50 (wants) live pet rat; a female.”

“I’m pretty sure I know who that is,” Amy said.

A month ago, a woman living in a group home for the mildly mentally handicapped got her annual mammogram in the outpatient clinic where Amy is one of two Mammography techs. An hour or two before her scheduled appointment, Amy’s patient took her pet rat to the vet because it appeared to be sick. The diagnosis was the rat would need to be euthanized. At the time Amy was administering the exam, this woman’s sole family member was taking its first run on the rodent wheel of heaven.

Physically, the woman was fine. Emotionally, she was heart-broken.

“I’m sure this woman sat for hours petting that animal as it slept on her lap,” Amy said.

In other words, it was a “lap rat.”

We figured we could get a female rat at one of the three pet stores on the way home, but where would we keep it without either one of our cats getting to it first? After all, a gift of a dead rat to replace the pet rat who is also dead would not be very “Santa-like.” We also needed to buy a rat habitat.

In other words, we needed a “rat-itat.”

As I write this – six days before Christmas – little Cagney (temporarily named for Jimmy Cagney of “You dirty rat” fame) is sleeping peacefully under the bedding of her cage. Either tomorrow or the next day, we will hand Cagney over to the people running the Secret Santa drive, who will deliver Cagney - the Christmas Rat - to her real owner.

“She will be so happy,” Amy said of her patient friend, “and Cagney is one lucky rat.”

This is one impromptu gift we’ll never forget.