Every day when I get home from work, my kid asks me the same thing. “What do you do at Crosby|Textor, Dad?”
I say the same thing to him I say to everyone else: “None of ya business, ya nosey mongrel”, and I give him a playful cuff under the chin. When he comes to, we play twenty minutes of Grand Theft Auto together and that’s the quality time sorted for the day.
It’s none of your business either, ya mongrels, but I’m sick of you Kiwis whining all day so here’s a bone, alright?
What do we do all day? We tidy things up. Put it this way. I like rats. You don’t. You win. Here’s what we do with our rat before we send him over to your house.
First, we fix the tail. People don’t like that skinny, greasy thing. We make it soft and fluffy.
The little claws are sinister. Fatten them out, put some nice soft hair on top and little soft pink pads underneath.
The big ears are a turnoff. We shrink those down and put more of that nice soft fur all over the bald ears. Then we make the rest of the body bigger to get the proportion right.
The pointy nose is homely. Flatten it down.
Fur on just the tail and ears and feet looks wrong. We'll cover the rest of the body as well.
That dirty grey colour isn’t working, though. We’ll change it to handsome splotches of glossy black and white. Nice.
Now clear ya throat, Rat. Give us a few bars.
That squeak is a deal-breaker. We’ll give you a new sound.
Let’s hear you now. Beautiful. You like that? Thought you would. We call that a meow.
And that's a purr.
Now go catch some rats, champ.