About the Author God of the Rats is Jim Lekaks first short story in Nuvein. He sends in the following bio: "In 1999 after being committed to a mental hospital, I escaped by throwing another patient through a window. Since my escape I spend my time writing and roaming the country avoiding capture by hiding in those bins of colored balls at McDonalds. I don't like to frighten children, but sometimes when they find me buried under those filthy balls it spooks 'em pretty good." We wish him good luck.

Sitting at my desk, looking out through my window, I hear the rain. The famous sound of rain descending onto a tin roof and overflowing into gutters I should have cleaned months ago. This audio tranquillity is masking a high pitched squeaking sound I have been able to ignore, but can ignore no longer. Through my window, out on the porch, I stand to see my cat molesting a small rat. I stand still, mildly disturbed and captured. I am passively frozen by this inextricable mis-match, which among other things, dramatizes god's complex sense of humor. I move to get a closer look.

The contest is savage and perverse, just like the cartoons. The rat is standing on his hind legs and weighs in at under 10 ounces. His little arms held up to his long nose like a miniature over weight, out of shape boxer in a mohair coat and Groucho glasses. The cat on the other hand, must weigh 15 pounds and presents itself like Godzilla over Tokyo. Unless the mob has action on the rat, it is going to be an absolute slaughter. James "Buster" Douglas vs Richard Simmons type stuff. Hopeless and brutal.

With a spasm of butchery it will never understand and with a mastery of murder it never questions, the cat bats the rat with a mighty cat uppercut, sending the rat somersaulting three feet into the air then bouncing on the wooden porch just like you would think a rat would. I wince and involuntarily tense up like I was the one pin wheeled. I groan through my teeth, and come to realize that the throbbing in my temples is from the clenched and battle ready fists which have flowered at the end of my arms.

Face down and flared out on the mat, the cat juggles the rat again, again, again, again and again finally catching the little man by the head in its mouth. The cat then rolls the rat's head into a saber toothed front lobby, being ever so careful not to crush it and spoil Luau. What in the name of all that is good must the rat be thinking? It is too damned disturbing to imagine. I exhale "Jesus H. Christ..." and clear the vain curse off the windowpane.

The trial stays in motion, but takes a twist. Unexpectedly the cat lets the rat go and retreats several feet away discarding the rat in the rain. The shattered wet rat, breathing heavy, can't gather the life or the nerve to run. Its tiny black eyes focused on an imaginary piece of cheese one-thousand miles away from this, this rat-mare, this horrible face off, this rat-tax come due. After several moments the rat cautiously rolled his body back over his hind legs and rested. It was now ready to spring away from his tormentor but didn't. The rat waited, calculating his chances, trying to anticipate cat's next rush. If the cat broke right, the rat might break left. If the cat broke left the rat might break right. A miserable no good fifty fifty. Life or death had become heads or tails. A joke. A mockery. Any hope of escape was based on some cosmic strain of great rat luck. I began to tremble. "Who is responsible for this?"

The rat waited. His eyes on his enemy. Just a moment longer, not quite yet, careful. Just one more instant...

The flash of the cat's next assault broke the rat's inertia and he leapt straight up and away to find a better life away from the 15 pound angel of death. Hissing, the cat caught the rat in mid-vault by the face and swooped it up into the air for the second 3D deliverance of this stormy afternoon. The rat hit the porch, bounced once, like a large potato and was jacked in the mid-section by a paw of razor sharp claws.

The rat then brought forth a tremendous squeaking, like he'd been stepped on or run over by a bicycle. He then went limp and urinated on himself thus having or feigning a heart attack, I guessed. Given the same circumstance I have no doubt Chuck Yeager would have done the same. The cat jumped back and cocked its head blinking, trying to grasp this unintentional knock out. The confused cat flip flopped the rat around for several testing whirlabouts, then held the rat by the flank in its mouth. It was a far-fetched con indeed, only to be tried after hiding or running and running and running.

Except for the cat's nervous tail, we were all perfectly still.

Dark moments passed. Terror. Gloom. And fascination. I was dreading the future. What was I to do? Am I the cat? Am I the rat? This was foolish. I had work to do. Work to do! This was an act of nature. It happened every hour of every day, to tens of thousands of mice, rats, birds and whatever cats all over the world could catch. It is what cats do! It was beyond my judgment!

Again, the cat suddenly retreated, seemingly buying into the rat's mime. The cat licked himself, an all powerful narcissistic bully. The rat was motionless, knowing that to even open an eye or twitch a limb would lose him his life. Then, the cat looked up at me. Its long pupils locked on to mine. Its knowing mortified me. The hair on the back of my neck bristled and I realized but for the grace of a few pounds I was a spectator and not a player. I broke away from its stare and looked down at my idiotic fuzzy slippers. It knew I was watching. I was a willing component to the murder. My heart filled with cold blood and pumped it through my sunken chest. This foul play required a witness: and I was it! The cat's tail began to spasm. His eyes dilated round and bottomless. He lowered on his haunches, every synapse and fiber staged for the final blitz.

I became poisoned with rage. I was jolted with a life time accumulation of bullies, tax collectors, petty grievances and most of all an alcoholic father. A flood of personal injustice supercharged a tantrum of retribution. I lurched away from the window, bumping my desk and splashing coffee over my keyboard and papers. Flailing myself out of my study I grabbed my peace maker and broke through the screen door out onto the gladiator pit of my porch. The cat now had the rat in its front paws and was dishing out some expert feline disembowelment. The rat was now miraculously returned from the dead squealing like a asthmatic with a whistle caught in their wind pipe. The sound was shear panic and horror. The cat's back claws bicycled under the rat's soft underbelly. There was no time. I stopped myself over the wickedness and brought my tennis racquet downward like a bolt of bright lightning striking the cat into the air and spinning it over the porch rail. Airborne and tumbling the cat screeched like a child in conniption.

The rat fell to the porch, slid into a gray lump, and stayed there.

The cat was gone, but there the rat remained; injured and unable to move. I felt scared. I think I almost killed my cat. My voice cracked as I called its name, "Shemp? Here boy. That's a sweet kitty. Here boy... come Shemp... come. Daddy has a surprise for you." I searched over the railing. The cat was no where to be seen. I really hoped a neighbor didn't just see that. I thought. I looked into nearby porches, doors and windows and found them all vacant and absent of witnesses. I followed my arm down to my hand that still gripped the tennis racket. The tendons in my wrist were taught like bridge cables and my veins bulged like the statued arm of a mythological God. The assumption of power startled me and I tossed my accomplice into a bed of yellow daises like it had become electrified.

I returned to the rat and inspected its small soft body. I bent down at the knees satisfying my curiosity with the warm blooded warrior wondering if it were beyond recovery. Its fur was matted and wet. Its whiskers were longer than I had expected and lay bent like broken CB antennas. There were red and brown spots of blood, weeping from what looked like superficial wounds over its gray coat. It was a wonder it was still alive.

Five minutes passed before the rat began to move away from me. It moved slowly at first, too exhausted to care that another giant was standing over him. Its long black filthy tail marked a trail of water and blood behind it. The rat then found the wall to the house and moved with some confidence against it. It continued until it came to the end of the porch. It hesitated there and sniffed the damp air. Without looking back, it jumped off and into the high grass.

I still don't know how I should feel when I think back upon my actions of that day. I want to believe I did something good or just. Something that makes me feel worthy of the love in my life. Sometimes now, I can hear the rat's high pitched squeaks that finally hailed me, but nothing is ever there. Shemp has been gone for almost two weeks now, and I know I will never see him again. When my wife asks me what happened to the cat, I gently laugh at her tears and reassure her that, "He'll be back, he's just on Walk About, like Crocodile Dundee." I hug her and rest my face in her hair. "Don't cry." I say. "He'll be back, just you wait." Then I feel my secret. It rises in me like water filling a warm bath. The cat did come back, and that was a mistake.