Immediately.
Nope. It took a few days.
The first sign that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong—or deliciously right, I suppose, if you looked at it from Quill’s perspective—was the squeaking. I’d gotten used to the steady squeak-squeak-squeak of the wheel, and occasionally I’d hear Cookie squeak a bit here and there.
This was much different. This was a crescendo of squeaks. So much squeaking my first thought was that the cats had somehow managed to get the door of the cage open—despite the lock I’d found—and the rats were in mortal danger.
No.
It was worse.
Much, much worse.
Because when I hurried up to the cage, I found the doors closed tight. Cookie was Spiderman-ing her way across the underside of the top of the cage, hanging upside-down as she climbed from one side of the cage to the other. Cupcake was still in the litter box, along with the source of the squeaks.
Because the squeaks weren’t coming from Cookie or Cupcake.
They were coming from the pile of wiggly pink jelly beans beside Cupcake.
It took an embarrassingly long time for my brain to fully comprehend what I was seeing. Because...how? How was this possible? How had Cupcake managed to produce a literal pile of what even I, with my very limited rat knowledge, understood were baby rats?
I mean, sure, I knew the basics—when a daddy rat and a mommy rat love each other very much and all that—but where had Cupcake met a daddy rat? Was Cookie...But, no. One of the videos I saw of rat care advice had featured a male rat and his, um,appendages. Which were large. And very, very obvious. Cookie wasn’t dragging her two best friends behind her.
Not that the how really mattered. At that moment, what really mattered was finding out what I needed to do about this situation.
A rapidly escalating situation. Because if I wasn’t mistaken, Cupcake was still producing jelly beans right before my eyes like the worst kind of magic trick.
For the second time in less than a week, I headed for the pet store.
***
Luckily, Emma was once again behind the counter as I practically tumbled into the store in a bit of a panic.
“Good afternoon. Welcome to Meow Do You—”
“Do you remember that rat you sold me a few days ago?” I interrupted.
She gave me a once-over. “I think so?”
“You sold me a rat. And a cage. And a whole cartful of stuff?” It had been five days ago. How often could she possibly con someone into taking a pregnant rat off the store’s hands?
“Sure?” She didn’t look convinced that she’d ever seen me before, but I didn’t have time to jog her memory.
I had a rat making a bunch of other rats in my cat café.
“That rat had babies.”
I waited for her to spring into action. Surely this was a shocking piece of news. She’d probably want proof—I had taken photos before I left—and then she would...well, I wasn’t sure what the protocol was, but surely this young woman would know what to do.
But she didn’t look particularly interested. “Cool?”
Cool? That was it? “I didn’t want her to have babies.”
“Oh.” She shrugged. “Then...sorry?”
“How is this possible?”
“Oh. Yeah, they come to the store all mixed together and we separate them by sex. So it happens.”
