“Company’s coming!”

Uncle Bob and Aunt Annie were coming over, so we were cleaning the house. Dad was mowing the lawn. Mom, my sister, Wendy and I were straightening the house.

“Take out these newspapers,” Mom was saying. “And wipe that table, and where’s Sniffles?” Sniffles was my sister’s pet rat. Sniffles wasn’t just an ordinary rat. Sniffles was a dainty white rat with red eyes, and a nose that was always twitching. If you held Sniffles close to your face, his twitching nose would flutter his whiskers across your cheek and it would tickle.

“Where is Sniffles?” mother repeated.

Sniffles had a cage but sometimes we let him run loose around the house. And sometimes he would escape an insecurely locked cage all by himself. Whatever the reason, he was out today. And today was the day he needed to be in. So we started looking.

“Sniffles.” “Sniffles.” “Sniffles.” We called.

“I think I saw him in the hallway.”

“Sniffles.” “Sniffles!”

Down on our hands and knees, we looked and looked and looked. Mother said we had to find Sniffles today. Because Aunt Annie didn’t like rats. She didn’t like rats at all. So Sniffles needed to be caught, put in his cage and kept out of sight. So we looked, “Sniffles, Sniffles!” No Sniffles.

It was almost time for our guests to arrive and still – no Sniffles.

“Well,” Mom said, “He’s out of sight right now. If he stays out of sight this afternoon, then everything should be OK, just don’t say anything to Aunt Annie about a rat being loose in the house.”

So our Uncle Bob and Aunt Annie came over and we were visiting in the livingroom. The adults were visiting, that is, and my sister and I were listening to them talk. As we were listening, what do you think we saw? —Sniffles!

He had crawled up the backside of the couch and he was now walking along the back of it, right at shoulder level, right toward where Aunt Annie was sitting. We didn’t have time to say anything. All of a sudden Sniffles was twitching his whiskers against Aunt Annie’s neck. Aunt Annie turned, saw Sniffles, threw up her hands and screamed. I think we all screamed. And we had to try to comfort her without looking like we were enjoying ourselves too much! It was awfully funny!

We did catch Sniffles and deposited him in his cage in another room at the furthest end of the house. And Aunt Annie did calm down and gradually regained her composure; although the prickly feeling along the side of her neck and the subsequent involuntary shivers it produced, took some time to subside.