Warning to Jorge: contains rodents

There is a family of small creatures living in the long grass near the train line in Lewisham where I cycle on my way to the university. The first day I notice them, I see a ginger cat too, lying in the sun with its stomach to the sky, eyes narrowed. The weeds around it are alive with something but I don't see what it is. The things don't flap like birds or bound like kittens- it is more of a scuttling motion, and they are fast enough to avoid identification, at least on this first encounter. The ginger cat is undisturbed.

The third time, I see that they are rats. Big ones, small ones, fat ones, skinny ones, racing industriously back and forth on their rat business between the retirement home and the train tracks. Every time I pass they are there, and they seem to be getting bolder. After the initial surprise wears off, I start to get squeamish. I am glad that I'm on a bike and that there's no chance that they will choose to run their rat errands between my feet.

Then I start to think about the ginger cat. Why doesn't it do something? I get more and more disgusted and start to metaphorise : the cat is an analogy for the human race, which has lost its hunger and is no longer intent on survival; it aims to get through its days as comfortably and uneventfully as possible. We lie in the metaphorical grass by the train track, balls to the sun. scratching our ginger arses and waiting for the next tasty morsel to be dropped into our plate. This line of thought occupies the remaining four kilometres to the university, my disgruntlement with the species definitive proof that my internal weather is synchronising with the tantrums of spring: squalls and sunshine, sunshine and squalls, five times a day.