The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

young rats to the school. And everyone says: How perfect, how well organized, how amazing!
    And then most of them go back to their own towns and set their traps and put down their poisons, because some minds you couldn't change with a hatchet. But a few see the world as a different place.
    It's not perfect, but it works. The thing about stories is that you have to pick the ones that last.
    And far downstream a handsome cat, with only a few bare patches still in its fur, jumped off a barge, sauntered along the dock, and entered a large and prosperous town. It spent a few days beating up the local cats and getting the feel of the place and, most of all, in sitting and watching.
    Finally, it saw what it wanted. It followed a young lad out of the city. He was carrying a stick over his back, on the end of which was a knotted handkerchief of the kind used by people in story circumstances to carry all their worldly goods. The cat grinned to himself. If you knew their dreams, you could handle people.
    The cat followed the boy all the way to the first milestone along the road, where the boy stopped for a rest. And heard:
    'Hey, stupid-looking kid? Wanna be Lord Mayor? Nah, down here, kid…'
    Because some stories end, but old stories go on, and you gotta dance to the music if you want to stay ahead.
    THE END

AUTHOR'S NOTE
    I think I have read, in the past few months, more about rats than is good for me. Most of the true stuff-or, at least, the stuff that people say is true-is so unbelievable that I didn't include it in case readers thought I'd made it up.
    Rats have been known to escape from a rat pit using the same method Darktan used on poor Jacko. If you don't believe it, this was witnessed by Old Alf, Jimma and Uncle Bob. I have it on the best authority.
    Rat kings really exist. How they come into existence is a mystery; in this book Malicia mentions a couple of the theories. I am indebted to Dr Jack Cohen for a more modern and depressing one, which is that down the ages some cruel and inventive people have had altogether too much time on their hands.

FOOT NOTES
    [1] : You scrape the butter on. Then you scrape the butter off. Then you eat the bread.
    [2] : It's hard to translate 'sir' into Rat The rat word for'sir' isn't a word; it's a sort of momentary crouch, indicating that, just at the moment, the crouching rat is prepared to accept that the other rat is the boss, but that he or she shouldn't get funny about it.
    [3] : Rat measurement. About an inch.
    [4] : The rats had found one in the town of Quirm, which is where they'd got the Mr Clickies. They were on a shelf labelled 'Kitty Toys', along with a box of squeaky rubber rats called, with great imagination, Mr Squeaky. The rats had tried to set off traps by poking them with a rubber rat on the end of a stick, but the squeak when the trap shut upset everyone. No-one cared about what happened to a Mr Clicky.