farm
The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything… Everybody knew it.
— E.B. White
The farm had never been the haven his mother had told him about. It may have been an improvement on the field — “A better chance to eat here than there,” she had told him — but the dangers were still great, especially the old cat with one mangled ear was known to roam around the barn. His mother warned him to be vigilant.
“Make no friends,” she had told her smallest child, “because these creatures won’t help you.”
And she’d been right. Within a few weeks, the geese and the pigs had bitten and stomped and raced the two rats out of their pens. The sheep ignored them for the most part, though the old sheep had studied Templeton with a knowing eye and said, “Charlotte will like you.”
The rat and his mother scurried back and forth between pens and troughs and their smart little nest safely tucked away in the far corner of the barn. She dreamed, she told him, of finding a little place under the ground, somewhere safe to store extra food and make a cozy bed. Templeton dreamt of a safe place to sleep, one far away from the cat’s paw and the pig’s hoof and the goose’s beak.
Food was hard to come by in the daylight, with the humans constantly in and out of the pens. The mere sight of a tail sent the youngest child screaming into the house and forced the rats to stay close to the nest for several days. Templeton’s mother only ventured out when the moon gave a quiet glow along the ground that illuminated the errant kernels of corn, which she snatched up and carried back to him.
But one night, Templeton, burrowed into the hay just out of sight of the pigs, heard the screeching, the shrill, icy pitch of an animal in danger followed by the low growl of the cat. He pushed deeper into the nest, waiting for a mother he knew wouldn’t return.
In the daylight, watching from the rafters as the cat licked its paw and cleaned one scruffy ear, Templeton made a decision.
I will not be a friend, he thought. I will not venture far from the nest, nor will I ask for help. These creatures have no mercy, and neither will I.
His stomach rumbled, and he took a breath before cleaning his whiskers and patting down his fur. If he was going to survive Zuckerman’s farm, the first thing he needed was breakfast.