Rats

A rat is any one of about 56 different species of small, nearly omnivorous rodents belonging to the genus Rattus.

Sourced

• How now? a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, 4

• There are so many different roles that the rat plays in human life. When it is an object of admiration it is usually in, say, the show cage at an exhibition, or in a laboratory cage (where is has often been described as a hero/heroine or martyr to science). In the wild, or in the margins of human life, the rat is commonly loathed, the object of vermin control. Either way, one could say that it loses.
  • Rat by Jonathan Burt

Unsourced

• When the rat laughs at the cat, there is a hole. The rat has not power to call the cat to account. The rat does not go to sleep in the cat's bed.
  • Anonymous

• The smartest rat isn't the one that finishes the maze fastest; it's the one that realizes it's in a maze to begin with.
  • Roe Fell