Scrtch Scrtch Scrtch

These days, you never know when the world will turn on you, without warning, and make you a pariah. With Casey and me, it all began with the rat.

Casey is my son. He’s 6. About two weeks ago we were walking through a park. The sun was shining, the breeze blowing. Everything seemed chipper.

Then Casey made an announcement. He had decided what he wanted for Christmas.

“A rat,” he said.

I corrected him. “You mean a mouse.” I pictured a tiny white thing with pink eyes. A cute little fella.

No, Casey said. A rat.

“I want a black-and-brown one,” he said. “The kind with a really long tail.”

He explained. His friend Mathew had brought one home from the classroom. Just for the night. Casey had met this rat and the two established an instant bond. The rat had crawled along his arms and shoulders, its naked tail tickling his skin.

I felt a mild queasiness. Somehow I had expected another kind of Christmas demand. A Super Mario 64 maybe. Or Italian skates. Something befitting a kid of the ‘90s. A rat had never occurred.

We drove home from the park and Casey grew quiet. Then he said, “You know, I will be really disappointed if Santa doesn’t bring me a rat.”

*

So it was decided, and our fates sealed. Casey wrote to Santa, promising to take care of his rat and name it Tommie.

Later, I passed along the rat news to a friend. This particular friend loves Casey dearly and comes to our house often.

She stared at me. “You are going to weld the cage shut, of course,” she said.

“Why, no,” I replied. I told her about the pleasures of rat feet crawling over shoulders, of hairless tails flicking at toes under the table.

“In that case,” she said, “we can meet in restaurants.”

And so it went. Another friend, a man of some size, described himself as a “get-on-top-of-the-table” type when it came to rats, pet variety or not. Still another talked about certain nightmares that tended to recur.

Casey was mystified by it all. How could anyone fail to delight at the idea of a large, brown-and-black rat crawling up your arm? It didn’t compute.

Nor was he fazed by other 6-year-olds and their own dreams of the whole Toys R Us armada. He simply wanted a rat.

Still, we were facing ostracism. Casey might have the courage of his convictions, but I was cracking. I pictured the physical recoil of visitors encountering Tommie scuttling along a wall. I pictured the look in their eyes when they heard the unmistakable scrtch scrtch during a quiet dinner. I heard their screams.

And so--most subtly--I began to lobby for a downgrade to a mouse. Mice were adorable. Mice were white. Santa would be happy to change the order to a mouse. Just think about it.

Sure enough, Casey did think about it. And went back and forth. Mice were cute, sure enough. But the original dream of the rat just wouldn’t die.

That’s how we ended up at the Petco on Ventura Boulevard. We had come to finally decide.

*

We looked at the rats. They were big. Then we looked at the mice. They were little.

Casey’s eyes moved from one cage to the next. The moment was thick with tension. I stood back to let the decision play out when I heard a whisper in my ear.

“Get the kid a Siamese,” the voice said.

I turned. It was a clerk who had watched our dilemma.

“Siamese rats,” he hissed. “They’re bigger than a mouse but smaller than a regular rat.”

“Besides,” he went on, “mice are stupid. Siamese rats are really smart.”

I wondered exactly why we would want an intelligent rodent. Would they learn tricks? Tell jokes?

No matter. The clerk led Casey to the Siamese cage. Sure enough, they were in-between size. And they came in colors. A fat black-and-brown one nuzzled the glass pane. Casey loved him.

We went home and got out a sheet of paper to write Santa a revised order.

“Dear Santa,” it began. “Have you ever heard of a Siamese rat? It is smart but not as big as . . . “

The next day we sent off the letter. Casey had only one last worry.

“What if,” he asked, “the North Pole doesn’thave any Siamese rats?”

I said I didn’t know for sure. But it was just possible that Santa had a special building for rats, and somewhere in that building he would find a Siamese that would be happy to come and live at our house.

And I’ll bet that’s exactly what happens.