January 4, 1999

I'm am very happy to take over the chores of logging the status of my brothers and sisters for today. Dan, my owner, is off on the other side of the room with my mom and dad watching them chew on his TV stand. I know Dan will have to go over this for me, since I really can't spell well, or even type for that matter. In fact, a lot of this will be with Dan's help. Not that I'm not big enough. I'm four and a half weeks old. Almost five.

This is Dan. He comes to our cage and lets us out. He gives us good food. I don't know what all of it's called, but I do like the corn and peas. He gives me something else sometimes that I like, it looks like corn kind of, but I forget what it's called. Oh yeah. Captain Crunch. That stuff is good. I don't know why he doesn't just give that to us all the time.

I don't understand it though. Why do we have to go back in the cage? We come out and play and it's fun. We do everything I think he'd want us to do. Chew on the doors. Chew on the carpets. Leave nice little poops everywhere. Climb over everything. Get into the garbage and drag it all over the hall. That's what were supposed to do and I think we do it well.

I do like our cage though. This is one of the tunnels in it. I like to go in there because my mom puts all her food in it and thinks my brothers and sisters and I are not going to touch it. But we eat it all. I guess that's why she keeps leaving food in it. We have smaller tubes in our cage too, but we're starting to get a little big for those tube. Hey, that's kids stuff. Maybe when I was younger I'd play in those tiny tubes. You know, way back in December. I'm big now. I play in big rat stuff.

That's my dad. He's a cool guy. He was trying to make me think he was a cat. I have never seen a cat, so he was showing me what they do. I don't get it though. If I ever see a cat, I'll probably beat him up. I'm a big kid. My dad is a good dad. He plays with us, shows us good chewing spots, and shows us how to do things, like hop real high.

That's my brother Hercule. We play a lot. He was getting ready to jump on me right here. He looks like my dad. Both him and Kato. I look like my mom. But I'm tough like my dad. Hercule was following me around a lot today. He wants to work the camera and do the writing I think. I remember when we were little and Hercule would always climb on top of me. I couldn't see anything then, but I could smell him. I remember when our eyes opened. We were like, "wow, we get to see things too? This is cool." Hercule was the first guy I saw. Then my mom, then Dan. He sure picks me up a lot.

That's one of my sisters. She's cool. She can wrestle just as good as my brothers. I've got four sisters. My mom is cool too. She still feeds up milk. And, we get regular food too. The best of both worlds. I hope this goes on forever.

There's Hercule again, sneaking up on me. Always wants to play. When Dan comes in and sits down next to our cage, we all climb on top of him. We want more goodies. My mom likes cheese, but I don't like it too much. When I grow up, I'm going to be a cat, like my dad.

That's Dan again. He's always leaning down to mess around with us. I don't understand why he doesn't sleep in that bedding we do. He gets sheets. Why is that? Doesn't everyone sleep on bedding?

See! There's Hercule again! It's like he's my kid brother, even though we're the exact same age. But as we were growing up, I always kind of took him under my wing. Back in '98, I watched out for Hercule. Me, Kato and Hercule are pretty close. I'm glad we live here. I can't wait until we're like, four months old. We get to drive then, don't we?

-article and photos by Dusty 1/4/99