A couple of days into his transformation, Jeff found that he began to view the restaurant employees differently. When he had first settled into the restaurant, intending to stick close to the eatery's trash bins as a reliable source of food for his seven-day adventure, he saw them as fellow humans.
Now he saw them as dangerous "others" to avoid if at all possible. He didn't spend much time pondering why his perception of them had changed. When he grew bored, he wandered through the back of the restaurant. Once he even ventured a good way down the alley behind the restaurant, but a stray dog saw him and chased him into a pile of crates. He spent a miserable hour listening to the dog growl at him from outside the protective barrier. "Man's best friend?" Jeff wondered without irony.
Another time he wandered into the dining rooms of the restaurant. He felt anxiety claw at the back of his brain the whole time, which convinced him to stick close to the wall, venturing into the open only to scamper beneath one table after leaving the cover of another. He found another dependable source of food beneath the tables. Beneath one he found a dropped dinner roll and gorged on it. Lazy and full, he was careless when departing and got spotted. A woman shrieked, waiters descended on the table, and the manager heard an earful from the outraged customers about the establishment's rodent problem. Jeff hadn't stuck around for the entire conversation, running as fast as his four tiny paws could carry him after the woman screamed at the sight of him. If he had lingered, he would have heard the manager ensure the woman he would call an exterminator immediately.
The third morning he woke, stretched, and poked his snout from beneath the heavy dumpster. He'd slept beneath the metal container after dining on his fill of scraps the previous night. His whiskers twitched and he smelled rain. Drops splashed down on wet asphalt all around him. He still had four more days! He felt stiff from resting on bare asphalt. He felt hungry, but he didn't want to get soaked by venturing into the rain.
"Why didn't I just make it for three days?" He lamented.
He was still surveying the outside from beneath the dumpster when a white van pulled into the alley. The vehicle parked behind the restaurant and a man in a uniform emerged from the vehicle and planted heavy boots on the asphalt.
"Oh fucking hell!" Jeff, even from his angle, saw the lettering on the side of the van that read "Piper Pest Control."
The man stomped toward his hiding place, causing Jeff to scurry back into the shadows.
With one strong arm, the man shoved aside the dumpster. He had much experience, and the caller had mentioned a rat problem. Might as well start looking in all the likely locations.
Startled by exposure to the rain and the light, Jeff hesitated in the open when the entire dumpster had been flung to the side in an unexpected instant. Oddly, the man didn't make a move toward him. Jeff blinked first in the standoff and ran toward the pile of crates that had given him refuge from the dog.
A moment later the restaurant owner stepped into the alley. The exterminator told him he had already seen one rat.
"Does he mean me?" Jeff wondered from beneath the discarded crates.
"I'll be putting out several traps and some poison baits," the man said.
Jeff listened with unease. He remained beneath the crates for hours until the exterminator emerged from the back of the restaurant, got into the van, and drove away.
By then, the rain had stopped. A bedraggled Jeff emerged from beneath the crates and scurried toward a crevice in the wall that led back inside the restaurant. He came to a sudden stop when he saw the large bed of wood in front of him that supported a network of stainless steel coils, springs, and heavy metal bars.
"Holy hell!" Jeff exclaimed as he looked at the poised and ready to spring rat trap. He carefully skirted the edge of the trap.
As he wandered through the kitchens, he detected some appetizing scents and discovered little piles of pellets. He was about to sample the convenient sources of food when he remembered the other part of the exterminator's promise.
He backed up from the pile. "Poison!" Jeff recognized. One bite and he'd probably feel very unwell.
Unfortunately, the exterminator had expounded on the virtues of cleanliness in keeping rats from seeking out kitchens. The entire staff had cleaned the kitchens from top to bottom. Jeff couldn't find so much as a crumb of food other than the perilous pellets. His cushy plans for the remaining time of his transformation were suddenly turned upside down.
"Wait...I can simply hang out at the dumpster," he told himself. "There's still going to be garbage aplenty!"
Outside, the van had returned. The exterminator stepped from the van and lowered a stray cat to the ground. It wasn't precisely ethical. The stray animal should have been handed over to a local shelter, but the man felt that the large cat looked like it had not found life as a stray too difficult. "It should put the fear of God into any rats, too," he said as he got back into his van and drove off a second time.
Jeff exited the restaurant a short while later and made his way toward the dumpster. His little stomach growled from hunger. He found a bit of gristle from a customer steak that had dropped onto the pavement just shy of the dumpster. As he worried the piece of savory protein, Jeff gradually became aware of that feeling you get when you're being watched.
His ears perked up and his whiskers twitched nervously. He turned an instant before he would have seen the shadow of the cat's raised paw.
"Shit!" Jeff squeaked and ducked the swipe from the cat.
"Oh shit," he exclaimed again as he felt the swoosh of air from the missed swipe.
He scurried beneath the dumpster, but not quite quick enough. The cat pounced, but managed to only rake Jeff's naked rat's tail with its claws as he disappeared into the narrow space where the cat couldn't follow.
The sheer adrenaline-pumping moment kicked Jeff's latent rodent instincts to the forefront. From the moment, thanks to his sister's meddling, he found it very difficult to regain control.
Hunger warred with fear. Acute senses told the rat the cat remained. Only hours later, when the cat had left to pursue other possibilities, did the rodent, its tail lacerated and bleeding, emerged to a new world.
Pain from the encounter convinced the rodent to leave the alley. There might be safer places to scrounge.
Fear kept the rodent away for the next three days. It returned, with half-hearted dedication to the area around the restaurant, but something — an employee bringing out garbage, the dog, the cat — always caused the rat to lose its nerve.
On the seventh day, starvation proved stronger than fear. The rat hadn't successfully found new food sources, and the rodent refused to let the foreign mind dictate to it.
Jeff screamed, walled off in a corner of the rodent's brain, trying to make the rat listen to him. He screamed even louder when he saw through the rat's uncomprehending eyes the sight of a huge rat trap.
The rat smelled the bait.
"No! No! No!" Jeff pleaded. Adding to his dismay, the fact the seventh day had dawned. "I'll change back any time...just stop you dumb rat!"
There was a loud snap, a squeak, and blinding pain.
The pain continued, and Jeff felt relief. The rat had only stumbled against the trap, setting it off, and in the process getting a length of its tail caught beneath the heavy metal bar that could easily have crushed his spine.
But now the panicked rodent thrashed back and forth, dragging the heavy trap, attracting the attention of...