Waving frantically at the streetcar was a brown spotty rat. Patchy, I guessed. I hid until the last human stepped off, then scampered up to him.
“Are you Wicket?” Patchy asked.
I nodded, and he motioned for me to follow. We darted under a newspaper stand, just in time. I shrank as a huge bus roared by.
“I’ve never been to the city. Uncle Milt said it’d be noisy.”
“You’ll learn to love it - especially the food. The wharf has the best clam chowder. Follow me.”
Dodging tourists, we hurried towards the docks. “Quick. In here,” Patchy called as he squeezed through a hole in the bottom of a dumpster. “Here’s where the fishermen toss their scraps. We need a fish head.”
“Why do we need a fish head if we can eat clam chowder?”
“It’s for Old Tack, the wharf cat.”
“Cat! Uncle Milt didn’t say anything about cats.”
Patchy grinned. “Relax. Tack’s not much of a hunter anymore. But the other cats on the wharf respect him. We bring him fish heads, and the young cats steer clear of our little home under the dock.”
“Clam chowder and a guardian cat! I suppose I’ll like it here.”
Adrienne Saldivar [San Diego, CA] enjoys writing and illustrating for children. Her family has a dog, a bird, a tortoise and a fish, but no rats. Visit her blog: http://a-saldivar.blogspot.com
© 2008 Adrienne Saldivar. Original for CCF Saldivar grants CCF first electronic rights for one month; CCF may archive the material indefinitely and include it in an eBook anthology).
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