Why The Rat? He was originally called Zulu, but when one of my friends first saw him as a kitten said 'ewww he looks like a rat', well it stuck and in the days as he got older it also became his manner.

He had a personality that few people would have enjoyed, but I marvelled in the uniqueness of it.

He started life with the girlfiend and I, and proved to be a character and the cause of having to move house several times till we found a place that would let us have a cat. There was never any thought of getting rid of him.

Trying to get off to a good start and not have a kitten in teh bed with us we locked him away in the bathroom where he couldn't annoy us. It took one night to figure out how to open the sliding doors and a further two weeks to convince us that jamming them closed would only lead to continued sleep deprivation, we relented and so began the great bed hogathon.

4am as the light shone through the windows, a noise would start that sounded like a fire alarm, luckily that was not it, rather someone wanting out. As he trained me I was able to roll over, push open the window and fall back to sleep without even opening an eyelid... ahh the bliss of a sleep in.