rat

I am with a friend on the corner of Wolfe and King Streets in Newcastle. We are trying to catch a rat that is in a drain. There is a large rectangular grate on top of the drain and the rat keeps poking its head out an opening to the side of the grate. The rat looks more like a Tasmanian Devil than a rat. We cover the drain and the grate with our quilt. The quilt is queen-size and filled with feathers, without any cover on it. I can see the diagonal diamond shaped stitching and the yellowing of the quilt. We have a conversation with some people and arrange to leave Newcastle for a few days. We collect the quilt, checking to see if we have caught the rat—we haven’t—and take it into the apartment building on the corner. As we carry it, I notice rat droppings on the quilt and shake it out. We take it upstairs and into an apartment, but there are two young men sitting in the armchairs in the lounge room; we have walked into the wrong apartment. We go into the next apartment but this isn’t the right one either. We climb the stairs and check all of the apartments, but none of them are where we live. I remember that the access to our unit is actually on Wolfe Street not King Street, so we walk back down the stairs, out onto the footpath, round the corner, and in the door on Wolfe Street. We return the quilt to our apartment and decide to get it dry-cleaned upon our return. I look out the window at the blue sky over the ocean and wonder why I am leaving. We decide to go to one of the restaurants across the road for a meal, but I can’t remember which ones are good. I realise that it has been a long time since I lived here.