Procratstination

 
Lately my wife, Bobette, has been pressuring me to go to the veterinarian. “You haven’t been there in the entire four years we’ve been married, and you need to get your pratstate checked,” she squeaks. I indeed haven’t parked my ratty rear in a veterinarian’s office since she and I were last working as lab rodents – all that poking and prodding really put me off seeing vets for good. Yet I know she’s right: at my age I really should go and get my pratstate checked. “But I don’t wanna,” I whine back at her, as if I were a little pup. Thus I find myself in procratstination mode.
 
I’m a healthy rat, I justify. I run 30 minutes on the hamster wheel everyday, try to restrict my diet to the lower-fat cheeses, and regularly exercise my mind through writing this blog to keep it as sharp as my incisors. “Would you like me to hold your paw?” she asks with a twinkle in her eye and a hint of wheedling in her squeak, to which my response is a wrinkling of my nose and the lifting of an eyebrow. (And when she’s not looking, a sticking out of my tongue.)
 
I feel like I have this massive burden hanging over my little rat head, a burden as heavy as one of those big wheels of government cheese (you know the kind), and just like a cat waiting to ferociously pounce on its prey I fear that making the trip to that vet’s office will be a very harrowing experience. Er, maybe I should bring her along to hold my paw.
 
… Later.
 
So while psychologist and philosopher William James may be correct in saying that “Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task,” I tend to side with the unknown author who stated, “It may be the early bird that gets the worm, but it’s the late mouse that gets the cheese.”
 
Keepin’ it squeak,
Bob