Urban Jungle : Finks No Longer

Hi, Francie, where are you going? Ann Thomas dotes on her beige rex as it attempts a tentative jaunt off her shoulder. The sudden company of a thousand squirming brethren gathered together for February’s Rat and Mouse Club of America show in Hacienda Heights would be enough to over-excite even the most Zen-centered rodent.

Perched on dozens of solicitous human shoulders are Himalayans and Dalmatians, Berkshires and Irish, tailless and hairless, agouti and amber, chinchillas and odd eyes, as well as legions of mutts no less beloved for their lack of pedigree. The rats stretch out their moistened snouts and whiskers to accept bribes of wild berry yogurt drops. Preening themselves for the tough competition ahead, they smooth out their remarkably clean coats with claws so long and elegant they might have just emerged from a manicure. “Best Costume” contestants don miniature Wayne Gretzky uniforms or hula-dancer skirts, fat tails of gray or pink cable drooping below.

The fluttering of Thomas’ fingers upon Francie’s underbelly seems to calm her wanderlust. Despite a lower throat that has been marred by wayward scratches, Thomas is glad that some good publicity about rats may finally be getting out. She has heard all the bad mouthing--how people will sneer that the only thing a rat is good for is snake food. “They’ll look at the big ones,” she rues, “and they’ll say, ‘Oh, it would take two of those to make a dinner.’ I don’t think they realize how nice rats are.”

A Ph.D. candidate in psychology at UC Irvine, Thomas can date her rat fancy back to her undergraduate years. “I had to do some rat lab stuff, she says, “and I fell in love with the rats.” A required act of rodent murder would alter her academic career. “I had to do decapitate one,” Thomas whispers, while Francie sniffs about unconcerned. “Yeah, it was physiopsychology class. We had destroyed a part of its brain, and then, after two weeks, we were going to chop the head off and do sections of the brain. I was going to be a physiopsych person before I had to kill that rat.”

Today, Thomas has to swear off pet stores, so gnawing is her compulsion to rescue the condemned. “I look at the rats and I go, ‘Oh I can’t possibly leave you to be fed to snakes,”’ she says. So all but one of mien were destined for snake food.”

Beside a stage festooned with rodent trophies and ribbons, Grove Pashley is judging the children’s competition for the show’s “Sweetest Rat.” Pashley, a professional photographer from Hancock Park, shot a buffed-up hairless named Darwin for the club’s 1996 calendar in an astounding sepia-toned crouch worthy of Robert Mapplethorpe or Bruce Weber. Surrounded by anxious preteens and toddlers, he pulls rat after rat out of their carrying cases, scratches their bellies and raises them up to his lips to be kissed.

Pashley’s criteria are rather subjective. “He was the most kissy rat,” the judge observes after snuggling one entry. “‘Kissy’ usually means they just kiss you a lot; they’re affectionate. but you’ve got to be careful because there’s different categories. There’s ‘Laid Back Rat,’ ‘Affectionate Rat,’ and there’s ‘Sweetest Rat.’ Usually the sweetest rat is one that handles real nice, likes to be held, and is just very kissy.”

Despite taking a blunderbuss approach, enrolling her Francie and Dovie and Widgren in the most “Inquisitive Rat: competition, Thomas has emerged without a trophy. “My most inquisitive rats all went to sleep,” she sighs. “They were not inquisitive. Sometimes things don’t work out as you planned.”

Like the best laid plans of mice and men?

“Well,” she laughs, “something like that.”