Scaredy Rat

 
Aaah! It’s Halloween, the most squeaktacular – let’s make that spooktacular – day of the year. Tonight all the kiddies will come a-knockin’ at your door, entreating you for sweets, and hopefully not leaving you any of those “tricks” they jestingly threaten. (A squeak to the wise, just in case: I’ve heard from some human children that the best treats to get are bubble gum and chocolate while the worst are those nasty brown taffy things in the black and orange wrappers, so if you don’t want a flaming paper bag of rat droppings left on your front porch, spring for the Bubble Yum.)
 
Everyone also dresses in the most fanciful costumes, some whimsical, like princess fairies; some heroic, like Captain America; and some terrifying, like flesh-eating zombies. I’m sure you can guess my favorite costume: Ratman. And the worst, the one that makes my fur stand on end: cats. It seems like every year at least three or four little girls dress up in what they assume are the cutest kitty-cat costumes ever and come trick-or-treating at my human family’s house, sending me scampering for cover. And wishing my whiskers off that the next trick-or-treater will be Ratman.
 
So as you and yours go running through the neighborhood tonight collecting candy and making mischief, do a favor to all of the rats who reside in human homes: don’t wear that cat costume!
 
Keepin’ it squeak,
Bob

Flea-Mail

 
For whatever reason, pawtumn – er, autumn – seems to be a busy time for everyone. That’s certainly been the case for me recently: there's been so much on my plate (none of it cheese, unfortunately) that I’ve not even had the chance to scratch out a blog for the past three weeks! And in my absence, cyberspace has no doubt been adrift without my ratty insight to provide guidance.
 
It’s been squeaktacular to finally scamper my way back to the World Wide Web (even though I’m not a spider), but there is one nuisance responsibility which has unfortunately tagged along: my flea-mail account is full. The inbox has so much spam in it that I’m going to have to invite my corpulent rat pal Gus over to help me scarf it down, and as to clawing through the more pressing messages I pawsitively have to get to, well I hope nobody needs an immediate answer! (Besides, it'll take a little while for the flea medicine to kick in.)
 
Clearly I need a strategy to deal with it. Lucky for me, just this morning I overheard a human talking about this very subject from a priority-management seminar she recently attended. The instructor encouraged participants to use the acronym RAT when dealing with their email messages: Route, Act, Trash. This may be all well and good for her, but as to my needs, I think RAT should be interpreted differently: Regard, Avoid, Treat. Regard the fact that I have a message waiting for me, Avoid reading it, and, after clicking “delete,” Treat myself to a nice piece of cheese for all my hard work. Yes, I think that between Gus and me both, we’ll have my flea-mail account emptied – and the kitchen, too – in no time.
 
Keepin’ it squeak,
Bob