The rats are learning to swim

I’ve come across yet another enigmatic note to self – I was reading in bed before settling down, and from nowhere and nothing to do with what I was reading, came a  thought which seemed so important I jotted it down:

You forgot to mention that the rats are learning to swim.

I have not the slightest clue what on earth I meant. It isn’t a misspelling, or  forgotten or muddled words, that was exactly it. It made such an impact that when I came across the note, I remembered thinking it, thinking  it important  and writing it. The sentence came out of the blue – but what was the trigger? I wasn’t reading anything about rats, I hadn’t read anything about them during the day. We used to have pet rats (see featured image!) so I have no fear or phobia about them as creatures, although I find wild ones somewhat alarming. I think that stems from when I was in Singapore for three weeks, and a rat used to come into my room through a lattice on the window and run round the picture rail while I cowered beneath my mosquito net.

Back to the sentence – I think the writer wasn’t me but a character, and the ‘you’ was another character. But who are they, and was this part of a conversation? Was it something for a story to be written in the unusual second person?  Was it a scientist investigating rat behaviours? A mad scientist? Someone with pet rats like we used to have? Is it a horror story, a children’s story, a story told by cats, or observations from a sinking ship? I am baffled.

This has become a bit of a mystery – as if I am in search of the missing context. Maybe I should write a story including that sentence. maybe I should write several different stories – now that would be a writing challenge!