Best of the Boards
Caprice Hokstad

I never meant to become Queen of the Rat Pimps. It just sorta happened. I didn’t even know very much about breeding rats, except that the little boogers are prolific if left to their own devices. Most everyone who has pet rats seems to be aware of this and has just one gender to prevent the population explosion that haunts our nightmares after viewing movies like Ben and the sewer scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The VISA checkcard commercial also hits this area of our collective psyche, even if they use rabbits instead of rats.

So my kids and I had three rats in one triple-level cage. All male.

The neighbors had only one rat, but they wanted more. Their one rat was female. Thus it was that I arranged for my little gray male, Thunder, to get some rat whoopee with Buttercup, a cream-colored hot mamma from across the street. Thunder didn’t mind being away from the guys for a few one-night stands, nor did he seem to care that I’d hired him out as a gigolo to net me some cute babies from the anticipated litter.

When I told my favorite checker at Petco that my little gray had fathered a litter of fifteen, she asked if I’d be willing to lend my STUD to her female. Daisy Bell had a very fine set of 12 of the most luscious fuzzballs you ever laid eyes on. No snake feed here. Prime fancies which got good PR because the proud mamma was owned by a Petco employee.

After that, the word really got out. Pretty soon, Thunder was getting so many amorous cheese-grams from sex-starved females begging him to come rock their cages that I had to limit his rendezvous to twice a week. Poor little Thunder was beginning to forget what his own cage looked like, and I was afraid that he’d start shooting blanks and then what would the females whisper to each other when they stood by their water bottles for gossip? I shuddered to think of Thunder’s crushed ego, so I began to guard his ratly seed bank.

When Thunder’s first litter was weaned by Buttercup, I took his stud fee in daughters, and bought another cage so I could service both sides of the rat population. My Rodent Pleasure Emporium has become quite the little enterprise and I don’t even pretend to offer massage anymore.

This is when I discovered another rat social problem. Unwanted pregnancies. So as a side venture, I began a shelter for females that got knocked up because their inept owners couldn’t tell that Mary and Martha were really Mary and Martin.

You may be wondering what becomes of all these babies. Well, with all their philandering, rats don’t tend to live long. (You might notice that virgins don’t live much longer, but I try to sound moralistic because pimps in general have a bad rep when it comes to such things.) Many rat enthusiasts are constantly replacing their geriatrics with new blood or adding to their stock. If that and Petco both fail to find suitable homes for any given ratling, well, pet reptiles in the neighborhood need to eat too.

Caprice was born in San Diego, California. She attended Baylor University in Waco, Texas. She is married, has two daughters, a son, and several pet rats. She currently lives in southern California. She has finished the first novel of a fantasy trilogy, The Duke’s Handmaid. (Read an excerpt.) When she isn’t writing or homeschooling her three children, she’s sewing wedding gowns or surfing the internet. Caprice can be reached at cfvici[at]aol.com.