alter was a very old rat who lived with a writer named Amanda Pomeroy Miss Pomeroy did not know that Walter lived with her because he came out only at night but of all the houses he had dwelled in Walter liked Miss Pomeroy's the best This was because she was a writer and owned hundreds of books For reasons he could not explain Walter had been born with the ability to read He had never known another rat who had this ability but from the day he opened his eyes he was able to decipher printed words When young he had lived near the town dump and had read an entire pocket dictionary and two books by a man named Sir Walter Scott Like most rats he didn’t have a proper name but that day he decided to christen himself Walter Scott was obviously an important man because his books though tattered were bound in leather Walter ate most of the leather but left the pages intact Walter read whatever came his way comic books romance novels and a book of essays by someone called Leonard Woolf He had read a novel by Stephen King and three poems by Edna St Vincent Millay He had read the last act of a play by Tennessee Williams and a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt The randomness of these choices was not his fault He read whatever he could take from the
dump or from the library book sale which was held outdoors in the spring Walter was a Norway rat or Common rat as the nature books described him He preferred Norway to Common because he knew he was not common at all Occasionally he chose to think of himself by his Latin name which was Rattus norvegicus Walter was ten inches long and had gray brown hair lighter near the belly His tail was thin and hairless and not his best feature though it came in handy at times His vocalizations included squeaks whistles and chirps but because he was so solitary he rarely made a sound The thing which had depressed him since childhood was
