Three rats, in search of an attention

I witnessed a rat physically learn something the other day. I got the see the actual moment where that last little neuron made the connection in his brain. Well, second-hand, at least; sometimes the rats haven't really got their heads screwed on straight, but their calvaria are all firmly in place.

I've switched rooms in the apartment, and since my new one doesn't have a scalding hot radiator for them to get stuck under or any outlets low enough for them to jam their little noses into, I've been shutting all the doors and clearing the floor of delicious things and letting them just run around while I work on stuff at the desk. They have the entire open floor of my bedroom to waddle around on, so of course they spend most of their time clustered in the packing box I've given them for a home base, chewing on each other under a tatty blanket. I always know where at least two of them are without looking, just by following the indignant >SQK!< >SQK!< noises.

Kirk decided after a while that he was bored of forcibly washing his brothers, and ventured out. The footwell of the desk was apparently appealingly dark, and it had some big warm things it it that smelled like Mommy, i.e, my feet. (I'm still not sure they believe that all the hands and feet really belong to me. How can one creature get so big? They're tiny, and they don't always know where all their various limbs are.) I was still wearing the jeans I'd had on for that evening's trip to the store, so of course he started snuffling around the hems and trying to eat whatever infinitesimal bits of the outside he found there.

He soon  stumbled onto the idea that he had claws and could maybe climb the pants to see what was up there. I let him scrabble at my kneecap for a bit before I just scooped him up and deposited him on my lap. I scritched for a little while until Kirk got tired of sitting still, then I let him slither ungracefully down my shins onto his blanket again, so he could trundle around on the floor.

A little while later, he got bored of floor and again fetched up under my desk. He ate some more outside from my pant ends, then gave scrambling up my calves another go. I scraped his pudgy corpus up again, asked him what he wanted, plopped him on my lap, and scritched until he was bored of snoozing on my hand and decided he wanted down.

Kirk shuffled into the corner under my desk, and then had a brainwave. He came back and nibbled on my sock. I bapped him on the head with my toe. He tried it again, and got the same result. Hmm, he went. Then he backed up, took a waddling start, and hurled himself bodily at my leg, whereupon I did the same thing I did the first two times, and collected him in a fat little ball of rat on my lap, under the drawer I've got the temporary keyboard braced on. Apparently this was just a test, since he wriggled down almost immediately and went off to do whatever it was they get up to in their floor-box under the blanket.

So now at least one of them knows that flinging himself at my pants means up, Mommy, UP! One of the things I love most about rats is that once they tumble onto something, they will devote every last fiber of their tiny furry little beings to figuring it out, just in case it results in food or attention. And even if it doesn't, they're quite happy to have done it -- I've stood across the room and watched more than one rat be very proud of himself for conniving a way onto the Forbidden Shelf before realizing he has no idea what to do here, or how to get back to where he was.

(They're also very quick to figure out when they shouldn't get up to a particular thing while you're watching. The Ratketeers we had in Flagstaff were under the impression that "Bookcase!" was a verb that meant 'turn right around and amble casually back the way you came, as if you weren't about to go climbing all over the expensive hardcovers'. I haven't formally trained the Bridge Crew, but they all seem to know that when I click my fingernails at them it means 'stop whatever you're doing under the bed there and come out where I can see you'.)

Since then, of course, the other two have witnessed me picking Kirk up after he tugs on my pajama pants, and have decided to try the magic trick for themselves. The only problem is that they hate sharing my lap. As soon as I scoop the second one up, the first one slides down my shins in a huff. Then maybe three minutes later, he forgets why he did that and recommences testing upmommyUP! for himself, and the other one exits stage down. Then the third one wants to know what's going on, with the end result being that I have this sort of constantly-circulating stream of rat to deal with, and I don't get any typing done at all until they go home.