8 Class Pets + 1 Squirrel ÷ 1 Dog = Chaos Read Free

“Does your dog bite? Would you keep him if he did? No, Sweetie doesn’t bite.”
    Then she’ll hand me a treat to show them. I standup on my back feet and wiggle my pink nose. (I have heard people say this is cute, and I’m working hard to impress them.) Then I take the treat very gently from Miss Krause and I eat it, holding it with my fingers.
    Another thing people say, if something is dirty and worn, is that the thing is ratty. I am not dirty or worn looking. I have white fur, and I spend a good deal of time grooming it. (Since the fur is mine and since I am a rat, the fur is ratty—but it is also clean and neat.)
    And if someone has messy hair, people call it a rat’s nest. There you have me: I
am
a bit messy because I love to chew on things. (Not fingers—but just about everything else.)
    Every year, the first story Miss Krause reads to the incoming first-graders is
Cinderella
. Some of the children complain that they already know the story, but Miss Krause says she wants to start the year with a story that has a good rat role model. The rat in
Cinderella
is the hero of the story because he drives the coach that carries Cinderella to the ball. Without the rat coachman, Cinderella wouldn’t even meet the prince.
    I love to hear stories—even when the hero is someone else besides a rat.
    My friend Twitch the squirrel often comes after school to visit me. (He’s too shy to sit on the window ledge when the children are there because they movetoo fast when they see him.) Twitch calls me “cousin” and tells me stories about Outside. I tell him stories made up from bits and pieces of the ones I’ve heard from Miss Krause and the children.
    In my stories the hero is often a rat.
    In Twitch’s stories the bad guy is always an owl.
    One day Twitch came, not to the window ledge, but running into the library.
    â€œHelp!” he said.
    I started to say, “What’s—” But before I could finish asking, a dog ran in.
    Rats can’t see very well, which is why, when we are loose in a room, we like to stay near the walls. But we are excellent at sniffing. I could smell the dog right away. He smelled angry. And then I heard him.
    â€œThere you are!” the dog barked at Twitch. “You’ll make a tasty supper!”
    In stories, that would be called showing a character’s intentions.
    I guess owls aren’t the only ones who can be bad guys in a squirrel’s story.
    Twitch ran up the leg of the table where my cage sits. He grabbed hold of the bars of my cage and said, “Cousin! Help!”
    â€œBack off!” I yelled at the dog, trying to make my voice big and fierce.
    The dog was not impressed. His barks were a lot scarier than my squeaks. He jumped at us. He wasn’t tall enough to be able to jump onto the table where Twitch and I were, but he almost made it. He jumped again, and got a little higher—so that the nails of his front paws scratched the wood of the table as he tried to hold on but couldn’t.
    Twitch said to me, “The rabbit says you can open your cage and let me in.”
    â€œGood idea!” (That rabbit is
very
smart.)
    I j iggled the latch.
    The dog jumped again. His front part landed on the table, but the weight of his back end made him slide off again. For a moment he got tangled up in his own long, long leash. But only for a moment. He took a few steps away to get a running start.
    â€œTwitch!” I said. “Let go of the door. I can’t swing it open with you holding on.”
    Twitch let go, I swung the door open, and Twitch ran in. I slammed the door shut.
    Safe!
    The dog leaped, and this time he landed on the table.
    But he was going so fast, he slid and rammed right into the cage, knocking us into the display of art books Miss Krause had set up.

    Books and cage and Twitch and I went flying off the back edge of the table.
    I was dizzier than the time Miss Krause put me in an