Another Rat

This one put in an appearance at the wet market at Geylang Serai. Noi and I were there earlier as she needed to buy various spices for the dishes she has in mind for our Raya Open House this Sunday. She's always bought them from one particular stall, and there we were, almost finished, the bags loaded, when this grey-pink fellow shot between us and the stall, almost directly across her feet, and made his way through a hole at the bottom of what seems to be a temporary partition wall made of plywood, I think.

He (or she?) was so fast that Noi didn't see him at all and, in fact, still doesn't know what happened. I felt that this was information she could do without.

I'm pretty sure the stall holders see this rat, or some of his companions, regularly. He didn't seem in the slightest perturbed by the fact that we were standing around, wilfully cutting across our ground, and I got the sense he was covering a regular route. I suppose the market must be home to a few hundred, possibly more, of these guys, my guess being that rats breed like rabbits, or vice versa.

I suppose I should be a bit disturbed by all this but for some unaccountable reason the thought of the fellow makes me fairly cheerful. But then I've been haunted by Coetzee's dogs all day, not to mention quite a few of the other inhabitants of Disgrace (of which more soon), and a fat Singaporean rat (but he was really quite slim, I just like the phrase) seems cause for at least a thin smile (or a slim grin).