Karate

Recently I noticed my ratty figure has grown a bit more round than I would like, so I aspired to shed the extra poundage by improving my diet – i.e., cutting out the cheese. (Oh, how pawful.) Along with this weight loss goal I decided to better my fitness, and naturally chose the only exercise regimen appropriate for rodents: karate. (I mean hey, it worked for Splinter in the Ninja Turtles, right?)
 
Yesterday I competed in an international karate tournament that just happened to be held close to my hometown of Ratlanta, Georgia. It was intimidating competing against rodents from all over the globe – jerboas from Europe, capybaras from South America, even African pygmy mice – but I did my rat-tastic best. (Going paw-to-paw with the capybaras was particularly daunting, especially in sparring (light-contact fighting), as some of those critters can weigh up to 200 pounds! Of course, the weight I recently put on did partially make up for things.)
 
My karate instructor wasnʼt thrilled by the fact that in just a week since starting Iʼd managed to chew halfway through my white belt (what can I squeak? no cheese = hungry = eat everything in sight), but I still had enough fabric left over to wrap around my fat rat waist. (I did happen to notice that some of the other rodents at the tournament had supplemented their diet with belt cloth as well.) I ended up placing first in forms and weapons (not bad for just a weekʼs training), but the capybaras swept board breaking, and – surprisingly – the pygmy mice took sparring: turns out that due to their small size they're squeaktacular at slipping up underneath their oppawnentsʼ appendages and scoring points! Needless to squeak, even though I know all about dark alleys (I am a rat, after all), I don't want to meet one of those little guys down one.
 
So I plan to continue my karate training, hoping that one day my chewed-up belt will be the color of my rubber rat fur; you can call me “Black-Belt Bob” then. In the meantime Iʼll make sure to scuttle carefully down the back alleys – and apologize to the humans about the large number of introduced rodent species now present in Ratlanta.
 
Keepinʼ it squeak,
Bob