Huggable Rat

[commonpeople1]

Bryan Talbot, The Tale of One Bad Rat, 1996
Boyish-looking Helen runs away from an abusive home to live as a beggar on the streets of London. The only creature she trusts in the whole world is a pet rat she freed from her school's laboratory - a friend who also reminds her of the stories of Beatrix Potter, which she loved as a child and that now serve as a sort of escape route whenever reality gets too rough.

Bryan Talbot's graphic novel is unusual in that it's about child abuse (at a glance, it can even seem like a TV drama transported onto comics) but also the bad reputation that rats have carried for the past centuries. I didn't know, for example, that rats are highly intelligent, and that they can be quite clean since they groom themselves. Almost makes me want to get a pet rat!

Comments

[zenithed.livejournal.com]

Hamsters are rubbish - they're nocturnal and don't seem to like people particularly. You can play with rats and let them out to explore and clamber around furniture, and they chitter when they're happy or entertained.

Cleaning them out's a bit of pain, but they're cheap to keep because they'll eat pretty much anything.