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
the bad reputation his species suffered from Sometimes after dinner when Miss Pomeroy sat in the living room and watched TV Walter would tiptoe out from his hiding place and sit quietly in a corner Miss Pomeroy he never thought of her as Ms had a penchant for old movies and it was not unusual to hear an actor on the screen say You dirty rat when referring to someone evil Once years ago at the dump Walter had rescued part of a book titled A Field Guide to Small Mammals and had read this about rats The Common rat is an insufferable nuisance There is no courtesy or kindness in his nature no nesting bird is safe from his attacks He is a villain and will eat almost anything from the refuse in the garbage heap to the dainty egg of a willow wren He is known to spread diseases such as typhus spotted fever and bubonic plague The words had made Walter weep for he himself and most of his relatives had always been kind clean and considerate If they had spread diseases they had been unaware of it and as far as he could remember he Walter had committed only one crime In a moment of hunger and confusion he had eaten two of his offspring but he had been only eight months old at the time a young impetuous rat and he had never done it
Walter had lived in Miss Pomeroy’s house for six months Adjoining her kitchen was a storeroom and behind an old bureau in this room was a hole in the floor The hole led to a passageway Walter had created and leading from the passageway were several chambers One chamber was for sleeping and another for storing food A third larger chamber was his library where he kept remnants of books and magazines He usually read at night though he had an unfortunate tendency to nibble the candles which gave him illumination At present Walter was reading a paperback book on Imperial Russia Some very important people royalty actually had been assassinated during a revolution long ago Their dog however had been spared It was a tragic tale filled with wonderful names Nicholas Alexandra and Rasputin Olga Alexei and Anastasia Words swam through Walter's mind like bright fish darting back and forth He did not always understand what he was reading but the experience excited him All those images all those thoughts and ideas The first book he had owned was not exactly a book but a book jacket found in a trash can The title on the jacket was A Farewell to Arms and for a long time Walter had thought the story was about people losing their arms a real predicament How would they drive cars without arms How would they cook dinner A year later he had come across the book itself and realized his
