Shortly after I joined the household two seasons ago, Daddy watched a documentary called The Meaning of Kung Fu. My cage has always been located off to the side in the living room facing the television, so I watch a lot of the things that Daddy and, less often, Mommy watch after my little girl has been put to bed. A lot of it is human nonsense, of course, but something about that particular show resonated with my younger self. I was fresh out of the Bad Place and had only been exploring my new environment for a couple of nights, but while my cage was much larger and provided far more interesting things to do, and although I was occasionally allowed to run around on the floor of the living room, I still was dealing with a lot of nervous energy.

  I won't get into it too deeply, but the documentary was effectively exploring how "kung fu" has come to mean some specific type of Chinese martial arts in English, but it actually means something closer to a practice that takes patience and hard work to complete. I didn't care much about that—although it did provide some context for a few of the movies that Daddy watched later on—but I was fascinated by the physical training showcased in the movie. This concept of "kung fu" covered everything from unarmed combat to dance to tea making, but although none of those things applied to rats thanks to humans' weird bodies, the idea of physical excellence through determined practice resonated with me deeply. After all, I was most awake during the night when my humans were sleeping (have I mentioned humans are weird?) which meant I had a lot of free time. Inspiration having struck, that night I feverishly brainstormed, experimented, and by morning had come up with a seven-step plan to gradually increase my physical capabilities while simultaneously translating what I had seen of kung fu—or wushu, I suppose, if I'm using the term introduced by the documentary—into a practice that was appropriate for rats.

  And uh, I might have gone a little overboard.

  I hadn't thought that my hours upon hours of nightly practice would ever amount to anything other than a nice exercise regimen, but evidently I had internalized more than just the movements because when I took off running with my little girl keening behind me, I didn't run away from the blue home invader; instead, I ran directly toward it.

  Something I've noticed: bipedal creatures are just so slow! You'd think, what with humans having so much more muscle mass than me that they'd be a lot quicker, but no; they accelerate slow, from what I've seen their top speed isn't that fast, and they're barely maneuverable.

  I covered the eight feet separating me from the blue invader in less than a second and in that time the invader only took a couple of steps.

  I had no specific plan, but I'd done a lot of nightly visualization during the last two seasons of my life and when I was a couple of feet away from the creature, I leapt. The thing didn't even have time to jerk in surprise before I had latched onto its thigh, dug my claws in, and accelerated across the top of its boxers and up its torso.

  I had briefly entertained the idea of running inside the boxers, as rats in their clothes always caused my humans to freak out a bit—or a lot, in the case of Mommy—but I was worried that I'd be trapped. My biggest advantage over such a large enemy was my sheer mobility, and causing a brief scare by running up its shorts wasn't going to keep it away from my little girl. She was clearly incapable of escaping properly right now, which meant that I was going to need to incapacitate or drive off the enemy, not cause it to momentarily panic.

  The thing slapped at its chest as I tore across it, but it was too slow. Not even my tail was caught, and then I was at the thing's shoulder.

  Once again, I leapt—this time straight up into the air. I traveled a good three feet straight up before whipping my tail around at the top of my arc, forcing my body to rotate so that I was once again facing the invader and propelling me straight back down toward it. The creature barely had time to raise its head in surprise before my paw impacted a point in its neck where humans have a pressure point.

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  The creature loosed a screech, and as it began to collapse to its knees it simultaneously swatted at its shoulder, but I whipped my tail around for leverage and launched myself upward once more. I repeated my trick of throwing myself downward with my tail at the top of my arc and this time slammed my foot into the creature's exposed temple, using my forefeet to summersault myself into a forward flip away from it. I landed on all fours as behind me the creature collapsed bonelessly to the ground.

  I glanced over my shoulder, but it appeared to be unconscious. Huh. Not bad at all, considering the thing was at least 100 times my mass.

  Now that the worst threat was dispatched, I sat up on my hind legs and began grooming my fur back in order. All those flips and fighting moves had fluffed it up something fierce.

  I paused mid-groom to find my little girl staring at me with a slack-jawed look on her face. "Snuggles...?"

  Oh my! I couldn't believe that I had left my girl alone in distress. I scampered over to her and reached up so that she would pick me up, which she tentatively did. Once I was secure in her arms, I climbed up to her shoulder and did my best to groom her. I could only reach the fur just around her ears, of course—humans are so awkwardly large—but hopefully it was the thought that counted.

  She patted me. "Stop it, Snuggles, that tickles!" She grabbed me around my middle and held me out in front of her face. "How on earth did you do that, Snuggles?"

  I cocked my head at her. Well, I mean, I watched a lot of martial arts movies with Daddy while she was asleep, extrapolated and generalized their basic movements and patterns, reframed and tested them for rat physiology, and then practiced them so obsessively that Mommy called me fat when she picked me up a few weeks ago.

  I'm not fat. I'm a lean, mean, sunflower seed-munching machine. Muscle is a lot heavier than fat, thank you very much.

  I wasn't sure how to communicate that to my little girl, though. She was remarkably bad at interpreting even the most obvious examples of body language, and I was convinced that humans couldn't hear worth a darn because whenever I said something they just blithely ignored it.

  She leaned in closer to me, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "Snuggles, are you...a ninja?!"

  What? No! It's kung...stop looking at me with those sparkles in your eyes!

  "You're a ninja, right?"

  No, no, no, that's a completely different culture! And I couldn't handle a throwing star or sword even if I wanted to.

  "You're a rat ninja, right?!"

  Okay, fine, you win, I'm a ninja.

  My little girl laughed and cuddled me to her cheek. "Well, whatever it was, that was amazing, Snuggles!" She suddenly lowered me and looked around, her breath hitching. "But what if one of the other aliens heard? It cried out when you hit it the first time."

  Oh, they were aliens? Well, I suppose that was likely. I'd never seen anything quite like them before.

  "What should we do, Snuggles?" My little girl set me down and stared expectantly at me.

  Finally! For a kit, she often seemed to think that she was in charge. I tried not to be too frustrated about it, because she treated Daddy and Mommy the same way often enough, but it was a little annoying to be handled like a child when you're one of the few responsible adults in the room. I've lived a whole three seasons, after all!

  In any case, it was obvious to me what we needed to do first. My little girl was getting old enough that she needed to start learning to protect herself, and I'd noticed that the alien's arms and hands were surprisingly thin and small compared to a human of the same height. I didn't think the boxer shorts were going to be much use, but that gauntlet-thing deserved another look.

  I walked over to the gauntlet, nudged it with my nose, and looked back at my little girl.

  She approached slowly, looking exceedingly nervous. "You're sure the alien isn't going to wake up?"

  Well, I didn't know for sure, but I sure hadn't held back against it, and it appeared to be a bit more fragile than humans, so it was probably safe enough for the moment. Also, it hadn't so much as twitched since I nailed it on the temple.

  It took some encouraging, but at last my little girl approached the alien, eased the gauntlet off its hand, and then scooped me up and quickly retreated back to the wall near the apartment building.

  She set me down on the ground and sat down nearby before turning the gauntlet over in her hands.

  "What exactly is this thing?"