Walter: The Story of a Rat

Walter: The Story of a Rat — page 5 — Arms meant armaments The book was about war There were many things Walter liked about Miss Pomeroy The first was that she was old like himself and had streaks of white in her hair that resembled the white on his muzzle And the second thing was that she was unconventional She wrote her books not on a computer but on an old typewriter and when she wrote she always wore a shabby blue bathrobe and stuck a pencil in her hair She was careless in the kitchen a habit that afforded him many midnight snacks and often forgot to open her mail which lay about on the hall table for days Whereas Miss Pomeroy was relentlessly untidy Walter was neat He kept the various chambers of his nest in perfect order and was fussy about his appearance Never a day passed when he did not groom his fur clean his whiskers and scrub his face with his front paws It was because of her mail from agents and publishers that Walter first realized Miss Pomeroy was a published writer She wrote books for little children uveniles She was famous Miss Pomeroy however seemed not to care about fame What she liked was to work at her rickety typewriter during the day and watch TV at night She would drink white wine and talk out loud about the movies she watched making comments Her favorite film was The Maltese

Walter: The Story of a Rat — page 6 — How miraculous Walter thought that he a reader had come to live in the house of a writer It was a stroke of fate Because he was a sensitive creature Walter understood that Miss Pomeroy was lonely It was not that the world didn't want her she didn't want the world Perhaps solitary was a better word than lonely but no one ever came to the house and thank goodness she did not own a cat She slept late every morning and drank black coffee for breakfast She snacked rather than preparing real meals and sometimes lay flat on the floor listening to music There were no family photographs in her bedroom and she never made her bed Her phone

Walter: The Story of a Rat — page 7 — rarely rang One of the reasons all this interested Walter was that he was lonely himself Rats have short lives but he had lived on and on the white in his muzzle a little more pronounced each year his joints growing stiffer He could no longer remember his parents his siblings or his many mates Everyone was gone To be or not to be Walter often said to himself That is the question The words had been written by a poet named Shakespeare A drawing of him was on display in the municipal building and Walter had often admired his face He was bald but had lovely eyes Did Miss Pomeroy write poetry he wondered He had yet to find the books she had published in her library on the second floor because the library was so disorganized Books on theater sat next to books on fish and snails Biographies were mixed in with murder mysteries A book on New Zealand sat alongside two volumes of Sigmund Freud Every night after Miss Pomeroy retired Walter would scamper upstairs to borrow a book which he always returned in the morning He was trying to read his way through the entire room no mean feat as Miss Pomeroy owned hundreds of books some of them new but most of them quite tattered and old One volume called You Can't Go Home Again had always attracted Walter and he intended to read it soon The title moved

Walter: The Story of a Rat — page 8 — him to tears for he himself had never been able to return to his first home a laundromat which had burnt to the ground Sometimes in dreams he could recapture the pungent smell of the place and recall the wonderful things he had eaten there fragments of candy bars and discarded bags of potato chips Small boxes of Ivory Flakes His nest had been under the floorboards and he had found the steady hum of the washing machines strangely soothing How many places he had lived The laundromat the municipal building two houses on Main Street three trash heaps He had had so many adventures but most of them were fading from his mind like old movies and at times he wondered if his life held any meaning at all I am past my prime Walter thought Long past it It was of course a phrase he had found in a book he town where Walter lived was a small one called Safe Harbor There was a main street with shops a few side streets with houses and that was all There was a movie house and a municipal building an antique store and an Italian restaurant At the end of Main Street was a pier where boats tied up in the summer and beyond the pier was an expanse of water called Hammond's Bay Walter knew the town like the back of his paw He could

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