Ben’s one true love up until just a few months ago was a knitted mouse that my friend Paula had made for Casper. Casper played with the mouse when he was young, but he didn’t love her like Ben did. Paula named the mouse Ratita, because I think it turned out to be a larger rodent than the pattern indicated.
Ben used to carry Ratita everywhere with him and would even nap with her during the day. It was insanely cute to happen upon them sleeping together, Ratita cuddled in his arms. When I would get out of the shower in the morning, sometimes I found he had left her on the bathmat; playing with her while waiting for me, then moving on to something else. I think theirs was a tumultuous relationship because Ben would alternate regularly between playing with and killing Ratita. Ben played/killed/cuddled Ratita so much that one of her eyes was almost loved completely off and she began to sport a sort of fuzzy afro from repeated ravaging. But then suddenly one day it was over. They probably grew apart as young people so often do and she was abandoned under the coffee table.
Archie has played with Ratita only once (which I managed to catch on the camera) but he did not seem to be that taken with her. So she waits patiently in the toy basket for another suitor.
1 comment:
Catrina,
How Ratita got her name is really a romance story. In 1969 our family visited Acapulco and we met a Mexican family vacationing at the same spot as we were. I fell madly in love with one of their sons. Later in life - much later - when he had become a vet working at the University of Mexico City and had a wife and two daughters of his own, they visited us. The young daughters oohed and aahed over our pet hampster, Winnie, and not knowing what she actually was, called her Ratita. It's a name that has stuck with us and I'm glad that you and I finally got to use it!
Our Jade used to walk on the tops of doors when she was a kitten. She was a menace - tormenting me while I was knitting and stealing the wool, and getting up on furniture at great heights. Now at 11, she is too portly. Our old boy Wilbur, now gone from us, used to hunt some shoulder pads at night that the girls had given him to play with. One of my fondest memories of him as a kitten is seeing him running up the stairs with a fabric shoulder pad, light as a feather, but almost his size.
Your boys, and Molly, are beauties.
Your pal, Paula.
Post a Comment