In Rome, I have a stretching post but I only like the one in France and so I stretch wherever I can find something tall and really get into it so my manicure stays fresh and useful so that I can tear the throat out of anything that just might come my way, even in an apartment in Rome on the third floor. Aren’t there any rats left in this ancient city?
There used to be plenty, because before mama and papa found this apartment, they had a great place all hand-painted by the owner in the manner of Caravaggio and there was a a terrazza, terrace to those wanting a little Italian lesson—which I’m taking by listening in on most conversations but since everyone talks with his hands, it’s not easy—and on that terrace papa put a trap after hearing scuttling for several nights up there. Not one of those horror story traps with cheese in it so that the poor little rat will get its neck broken going for the caciotta (that’s a local cheese around Lazio; Lazio is where Rome is—you see, I’m picking up things right and left; it is also the name of the team we HATE because we are all Romanisti, which means we love the ASA ROMA team, forza, Roma—the team you love to hate, mama calls it because right after they have scored one goal, the players behave as if they have nothing else to do except bide their time and kick the ball around before having a shower after the game and meeting their wives or girlfriends for whatever other fun games the’re going to play that night, but more of this later—and so they put out a trap that used to be called Have-A-Heart in the USA, in which the critter you want to catch will find himself or herself, after having taken the bait and the front door has fallen down and traped the animal without bodily injury.
A kind of cool trap, if you ask me, but then papa had to go up and get the trap with the huge RAT in it (I would have torn its throat out but…) and walk down to the Tevere, the river near the house and let it go in one of the cloaca—also called the Cloaca Maxima, one of Rome’s oldest sewage systems (you see what I am studying here)—and the rat was in rat heaven. Weird things happen in Roma (that’s Italian for Rome). We’re about to go back for papa’s birthday with his kids and grandkids, so I’ll tell you what it’s like to be in Roma with the new Il Papa, Mr. Francesco, in the coming weeks. Me, I’m ready for some decent pizza and to gaze upon the Doria Pamphili Museum, right across the street. A presto, as they say when parting…or ci sentiamo, which often means ‘don’t call me, I’ll call you, or maybe I won’t, or maybe you won’t but we’ll work it out all the same, or maybe never’….I love Italian.
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