From Hester the Rat
I was talking on the phone with an old friend about my little pet mouse, Prudence. She had recently died, and I missed her terribly. Not everyone could understand how the world had grown gray for me when I lost my rodent companion, how hard it was to come home at the end of the day to my empty New York City apartment where no one, not even a mouse, stirred. But I knew I could turn to my friend, a scientist who worked with lab animals. She listened to me grieve for Prudence, and began to tell me about the rats she worked with."They are so cute, so sweet," she said. "And so smart and interested." And then she asked if I had ever considered a rat as a pet.
I had not. I didn't want to replace Prudence; the idea of supersizing my mouse held no appeal. But after I hung up, I thought about it. Newly parted from my boyfriend, I was lonely. I called my friend back. "Okay," I said. "Would you bring me a rat, please?"
A few days later, I took the train out to Long Island, got dinner and a rat, and toted my new pet back to the city in a shoe box. I decided to name her Hester, after Hawthorne's stigmatized heroine. If you're a rat, I reasoned, you don't need to wear a scarlet letter -- you are a scarlet letter.
The cage was all clean and ready. I reached into the shoe box to remove Hester. That's when she whipped her head around and sank her ratty teeth into my hand.
I yelped and cursed. She may have looked like a bigger version of Prudence -- white, with red eyes, and a tail longer than her body -- but this rat was no mouse.
Telling myself that maybe Hester was freaked out from the move -- leaving the comforting fluorescent light of the lab and the scent of other experiment-bound rodents -- I tried again to connect with her one Saturday afternoon. I made a peace offering of a cracker. She ignored the food but wasted no time in chomping on my skin. Then she withdrew.
She ran to a corner of her cage and cowered. I retreated to a corner of mine and sat at my desk, head in hands. I'd always been able to communicate with animals. What was wrong with Hester? Or, more disturbingly, what was wrong with me?
It was a relief to go to my editorial assistant job. But inevitably I had to come home to a rat-infested apartment. Hester would be alert the moment I walked in. Each time I opened the door to give her food, she'd scamper over, a sinister look in her eye, wanting blood, I could tell. I learned to be very quick.
A few weeks after I got her, I could no longer put off cleaning her cage. I opened the door and, after some tentative air sniffing and poking about, she climbed out. I was able to guide her to the floor, where she could safely hang around while I was cage cleaning. In such a small space, it wasn't likely that she could get lost.
A Beautiful Relationship
But once the cage was newly fresh, I looked around and didn't see her. At last I found her, in the corner where I'd piled my shoes, perched atop a pair of Italian leather oxfords. She had chewed a hole right through the top of the left shoe. I screamed. She looked up at me. Smug? Was that a smug look on her ratty mug? I picked her up by the tail and put her into the cage.Not long afterward I was reading in bed one night and looked up to see Hester in her cage, standing at the door. With a sigh, I decided I'd try just once more. Carefully, I let her out and then placed her up onto the loft bed. While I read, she explored the hills and dales made by the comforter, staying mostly near my feet. I could see her occasionally looking in my direction, watching my hands each time they turned the page. The way she sat, ears alert, whiskers twitching, she almost looked cute, in a ratty kind of way.
Suddenly she came charging, right toward the hand lying idle on my stomach. I flashed back to tiny pointy teeth, and just as she got to my hand, I used it to shoo her away. She retreated to the foot of the bed.
"Get away, you rat," I said.
She shook herself off, looked me dead in the eye and came galloping back. Again I shooed her to the foot of the bed. Again she charged, once more into the breach. I looked at her. She didn't look angry or frightened. She was alert and interested. Could it be? Maybe, just maybe, after that initial period of being freaked out, what I had taken for aggression was actually play. Maybe what I had thought was hostility was in fact interest. Had I misread her?
Slowly I moved my hand in front of her. She watched, and then gave chase. I stopped and held my hand still. I braced myself as her mouth came near my finger. I froze, waiting for pain. She sniffed, sniffed, and, gently, with her nose, nudged it. I moved my hand in circles, and in circles she followed. Hester wanted to play. I put my hand down, palm up. She crawled slowly onto it. I brought her up to my face, eye to eye, and finally we saw each other. I was shocked by my own ignorance, by my inability to recognize her for who and what she was -- playful, curious and engaged. My heart swelled.
This, I felt, was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
Every night from then on, as soon as I'd get home, I'd let Hester out of her cage, only putting her back when it was time for sleep. And so we reached an understanding. Until I appreciated Hester for who she was, we couldn't connect. She wasn't who I wanted her to be -- Prudence; she was, and could only be, herself. Love can be an imaginative act not only of seeing what's there, but accepting what isn't. Looking down at my rat, nestled in my armpit, I felt mostly lucky in love.