At what age does a person start calling anything that looks like a mouse, or a hamster, a rat?
What changes in a person's psyche that warrants calling those poor little cute snugly helpless creatures, rats? Even a rat has his cute moments!
I had a hamster growing up, or should I say thirty or so, depending on whether the babies daddy got into the cage and ate some. I really never got a clear count. My father would ask at the dinner table how many rats I had today. I'd take a look into the hamster cage and yell back, 'not sure'! There were just too many naked squiggly bodies in a tight ball, impossible to count. Their mom wouldn't let me near anyway, so we never grew a close bond, ever! It was all about her, feed me, I need water, I'm bored, where is that running wheel you promised me?
I'll never forget the day I accidentally left the door to their cage unlocked. I never told anyone. Luckily, Mom and Dad stayed in the cage but the other twenty-eight or so, I lost. Our cat seemed pleased.
It was an easy escape. Later, I found one going up into the attic, flattened out like a pancake with people stomping on it in the corner of a dark step. A gift from 'Pussy' I never received. It had been lying there dead for a good two months before I found it. I thought no one went up into the attic because it was so dark, but apparently I was wrong, it seemed every time someone did go up there, they stepped right on her. I almost had to use a spatula to scrape the poor thing off. Imagine! eh?
I stopped collecting rodents as pets soon after that. Now every time I see a hamster or a mouse I think of all the Rats I had. Thirty or so, my psyche had changed.
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