Templeton's Farmly Feast

In the coming year after the fair, Templeton had never known such decadent gorging. Eating thrice a day until his stomach grew painfully bloated, his once tiny figure quickly swelled into a corpulent behemoth of a rodent. In just a few short months as Wilbur experienced his first winter, the rat had outgrown his hole in the ground. Once another year of summer rolled around, he had grown so fat he rivaled the gander in girth. Every day he grew capable of eating just a little bit more; and in such peaceful times, food was plentiful enough for even Wilbur to put on weight.

Midway through summer, the Zuckerman farm thrived. The chickens and geese laid a plentiful clutch of eggs; The apple and blueberry harvest overflowed the collection baskets; the heifers in the barn produced enough milk to fill an entire keg; and Templeton profited from it all. Showered in a wealth of gluttony, his giddy-chuckling excitement was matched by the amount of groaning he’d make hauling his consistently overgorged stomach around.

Templeton woke to another bountiful summer day with clear skies, the warm rays cozily stroking his broad-roll filled back, and the mouthwatering breeze of morning slops caressing his muzzle. Oddly enough, his belly felt completely empty of his previous day’s gorge, causing him to feel more ravenously hungry than usual. Waddling on all fours, his immense weight barely weighed on his paws; his blubbery body offered little resistance as well, despite dragging across the floor and being so wide he could barely put one hind leg in front of the other. It was a curious feeling compared to being barely able to haul himself back behind the hay bale yesterday, but the rat continued to hold his head high. He figured it was only a matter of time before he grew accustomed to his immense size.

The dawn of the fair was nigh, and he had been working extra hard to train his stomach to gorge til he was on the verge of passing out. Zuckerman had been extra helpful after ordering Lurvy to provide double the slops at the beginning of the season. Standing over the trough, his eyes bulged and mouth salivated at the sight of his feast. The trough had been filled completely to the brim, consisting of more leftover foods than the typical sludge to food ratio. Licking his chops, the rat patted his hefty drum of a belly before diving in face first into his feast.

He shoved all he could into his bottomless maw, gathering half eaten donuts, nibbling on corn cobs, and wolfing down torn up waffles with his grubby paws. His empty stomach once again felt the loving comfort of sustenance, as rotted veggies, spoiled eggs, and moldy cheeses nestled within its cavernous confines. Food poured its way inside him like a cornucopia funneled down a garbage disposal. With such a wide selection of solid food, he felt himself growing fuller and fatter much quicker than he usually would during the day.

After finishing the top layer of the trough, the rat was forced to lean further in. To his delighted surprise, the deeper he went in, the more sizable the food portions became. He found sandwiches that had barely been nibbled on, and heaping chunks of scrambled eggs and pancakes barely cut into. He would forcibly swallow entire apples, oranges, and pears, clutching his stomach as they shot past his throat, colliding with the rest of his indigested gorge with a blorp. Hoisting himself inside the trough, he felt his fat body pool around it. Overwhelmed with gluttonous ecstasy, he devoured every last scrap of food, regardless of how obscenely bloated he felt.

Moaning and belching, Templeton stood himself upright, seating his wide ratty rump on the back of the trough while his massive belly flowed over the front. It pained him to arch his back, feeling the weight of his engorged gut holding him down. He proudly caressed it with both paws, groaning at how stretched to its limits it felt. Even the layer of fat under his black fur felt as thin as paper, allowing him to feel the defined shapes of the individual foods he managed to eat whole.

“*Ooogh*, *hic-hilp*, what a feast,” Templeton groaned. “Zuckerman’s never filled the trough that much, *hic-hilp*. I think, *ooorp*, I’ve eaten a day’s worth of food, *hic-hilp*, in one sitting. Oooh, *bworp*, what a time, *hilp*, to be a rat.”

Templeton gave his robust gut a series of hearty smacks; the impact of his paws upon his flesh squelched like feet crushing grapes. Dazed as he was in his hedonistic state, his ears picked up a peculiar sound from behind him. He turned his body a quarter toward the sheep pen, where upon making eye contact, each of the four who stared at him averted their gaze. The same sounds came from the horse pen in front of him, and from the chickens perched along the fence posts. Even Wilbur laying on his manure pile did his best to hide a grin, face scrunching up like he had swallowed a lemon. After intently listening, he scowled at those who surrounded him. For some odd reason, every animal on the farm was snickering at him.

The rat waited for someone to reveal the practical joke done upon him, but nobody admitted to anything. The food itself wasn’t tampered with, as his stomach digested it just as well as it ever had. Taken out of his happy mood by their sneering, the rat got off the trough, and on two paws, he waddled over to the garbage can near the Zuckerman house front window. As full as he was, he didn’t feel comfortable sleeping in the barn with Wilbur and the others. After forcing down a few more scraps of food, hopefully he’d knock out long enough for the other animals to tire of whatever joke they had planned for him.

Crawling up the wood pile to reach the top of the garbage, Templeton stopped short of the open lid. He heaved a sigh, looking down at his overburdened gut, impressed by its sheer size so early in the day. Just as he was about to admire it further, he heard the muffled voices of Zuckerman and Lurvy through the kitchen window.

“You put in extra slops like I asked,” said Zuckerman.

“Yes sir,” said Lurvy, “triple the usual, with a little bit of the harvest as well.”

“Good. I want that rat eating as big and well as any blue ribbon hog at the fair. Keep an extra bucket of slop by the trough if you have to. I want that rat fat enough to fit in my bathtub.”

“That shouldn’t be hard. He’s already grown twice as big since we started giving him double the slops.”

Templeton’s ears and whiskers perked up as he smiled from ear to ear. Had some sort of homogenous relationship been reached between them that he didn’t know about? Has he found some place alongside Wilbur as Zuckerman’s prized rat? The thought of growing as big and fat as his tub caused his stomach to gleefully churn. He would happily grow as big as the house if it meant Zuckerman feeding him more.

“Then he should grow three times as much by November,” said Zuckerman. “I tell you Lurvy, it’s going to be one heck of a Thanksgiving.”

“I’ll say. You’ll probably get enough meat for the whole town when it comes time to kill that rat.”

Fur standing on end, a sudden chill ran down the rat’s spine. His gluttonous hunger faded, and with the flip of a switch, his massive girth appeared far less appealing. His paw clutched at his neck, burying itself under the flab of his double chin and neck fold. Heart racing, he saw the rest of the farm animals continuing to snicker. Now that he knew why, grief gripped his ratty heart as he wondered how long they’d known.

He crawled down from the wood pile and made his way back to the barn. Waddling past the goose and gander, they turned their backs to him, giggling to each other under their wings. Wilbur lay sprawled on his sides, grinning at the rat as he approached him.

“Wilbur,” said Templeton, “you have to help me, pal. Zuckerman plans to turn me into Thanksgiving dinner!”

“I know,” said Wilbur, “everyone knows. You didn’t think you could just keep getting fatter and fatter everyday and it’d go completely unnoticed did you? You were bound to get caught sooner or later.”

“B-but, how long has everyone else known? Why didn’t you or anyone tell me?”

Wilbur chuckled. “We’ve known for some time now, and thought it’d be funnier to just let you gorge yourself each day clueless of what’s to come. You might as well enjoy as much food as you can, Templeton. Come November, he’ll take the knife to you, my friend.”

The pig laughed along with the other snickering animals in the barn. Templeton gloomily waddled to his resting place behind the hay bales, lying down on his side and covering his ears to muffle everyone’s jeering laughter. While he knew he was never fondly favored on the farm as well as Charlotte, it never occurred to him how deeply hated he was by the other animals. His ratty heart shriveled up to that of a dried raisin; the joys of life brought on by the past few months of glorious overeating were now tainted with the prospect of death. As much as it would pain him, he couldn’t stay on the farm any longer.

The moment Templeton closed his eyes to sleep, he opened them a second later to a completely different part of the day. He couldn’t even remember falling asleep; the transition between morning and night happened so fast, it was like turning a page in a book. He got up and walked on all fours, his feast from the morning miraculously mostly digested with just a few bits and pieces still bubbling away. His broad body grew wider and larger as a result, yet felt as manageable as before.

Night came to the farm, filled with the chirping of crickets and snoring of other animals. The moon hung high overhead, and the trough was once again filled to the brim with food, with an added bucket of slops sitting right beside it. Templeton, however, ignored it, no longer tempted to eat and instead cut his way through the sheep pen and toward the dirt road. Passing Zuckerman’s truck, he looked back to the barn one last time. The delectable aroma of the slops now tasted like dirt in his mouth, as his fond memories of the farm became soured by the betrayal of its inhabitants.

Turning to the road, he was suddenly buffeted by something of significant weight. Pushed over onto his back, a pair of claws threateningly clenched around his stomach. Templeton groaned as the beast pressed its body against his, leaning over his mountainous gut until its piercing eyes and sharp fangs came into view. The cat caressed its claws across his bulging waistline and up to his chest, licking its lips and wearing a sly grin.

“Finally,” said the cat, “I’ve caught you at last, rat. I’ve watched you for days, waiting for the perfect time to strike while you grew increasingly fatter. I’ve devoured many rodents before, but you certainly trump them all.”

The cat stood Templeton upright, leveling him with his chest while his head stood over him like a serpent. “Mmm, so much meat,” the cat purred. “You’re going to make me so deliciously fat after I eat you.”

Face to face with its gaping maw, the rat’s heart raced as his doom slowly approached. At that moment, his stomach fiercely grumbled as it would when a mouthwatering smorgasbord sat before him. A wave of hunger crashed against his mountain of overwhelming fear, eroding it down to a point where his body no longer froze up. The cat held him by his waist, but his arms were still free. Belly roaring like a caged lion, he summoned enough courage to make one final attempt to fight back.

“Not if I eat you first,” shouted the rat.

As the cat lunged open mouthed toward Templeton’s head, the rat leaned back, opening his own maw and catching the cat’s muzzle inside it. In the sudden confusion, he clutched at the cat’s whiskers, pulling the cat deeper into his mouth as if he were swallowing a large apple. The cat’s body trashed about like a fish out of water, claws painfully digging into the rat’s blubbery flesh. But he took another hefty gulp, swallowing the cat until his mouth reached up to the cat’s forelegs.

The cat’s struggling body helped Templeton up to a standing position, and using the superior girth of his belly, he picked the cat off the floor. Swallowing down the cat’s middle, a rush of euphoria filled the rat’s stomach as great as any feast. Gulping down mounds of food filling his cheeks was always a pleasurable occurrence, but something about wolfing down a creature nearly as big as him felt completely intoxicating. The way its body packed every nook and cranny of his gullet, how it swelled out his chest, and the amount of space it filled up in his stomach, felt as pleasurable as horking down a whole watermelon.

Stuffing down the cat’s hind paws and slurping up its tail, Templeton groaned with delight as his belly exploded in size. With a loud blorp, it stretched several feet further in front of him. His body grew wider and slightly taller to better accommodate his meal, allowing him to loom over his glorious belly, watching as the distended features of the feline protruded under his blubbery flesh.

Loosing a gaseous belch, the rat drunkenly fell onto his gut, eyes half shut and sloppily grinning. “Oooh, *oooorrp*, incredible,” he patted his stomach, “it’s like eating a trough full of slops in one go. *Buuurap*, *uff*, better even.”

He sneered as the cat writhed within his stomach, giving him a most pleasurable inner massage as it sloshed around. “Hehe, who’s making who fat now? My last fattening meal before I left this dump. Although,” his stomach grumbled, “come to think of it. I could still leave…even fatter.”

Rubbing his second chin, Templeton turned his attention to the chicken coop beside the barn. “Oh, this will definitely be quite a night,” he said, wobbling his massive gut by its sides before dropping it onto the floor.

The chicken coop appeared like more of a chicken mansion from the outside; it was a large shack holding up to thirty of the fat feathered fowl. Finding a nearby rake, he used it to pull down on the door handle. The hens clucked in confusion as the rat walked up the ramp, groaning just to squeeze his waistline through the door. “Evening ladies,” said the rat, “you’re all about to make me one happy rat.”

Grabbing the hen closest to him by the neck, Templeton shoved it in his mouth. Wings flapping and legs kicking, he tilted his head upward, pulling the bird further down his gullet before swallowing it completely. Belching up feathers and wiping his mouth of drool, he groaned with pleasure as his stomach swelled outward another few inches. The other hens cawed frantically, pushing each other toward the back to the coop, leaving Templeton to effortlessly gulp down dozens of eggs from each nest.

The rat gleefully gorged himself on a chicken in each paw, wolfing them down in seconds before stuffing his face again. The further he grew, the more space he filled up within the coop, baring some of the frantic chickens from escaping, but not all. He moaned with the utmost pleasure, feeling his engorged gut continue to swell in size faster than all the gorging he had done in a single month. His waist brushed against the coop walls, and his chest reached the second layer of eggs as he grew in height. Filled with gluttonous rapture, his stomach greedily demanded more sustenance.

Once the coop was empty of hens and there were no more eggs to eat, Templeton groaned with delight. His sloshing stomach sounded like a thick bubbling stew, rich with nourishment and glorping with the slightest step or turn. Turning toward the door, his gut demolished the nests in front of him. The roominess of the coop now closed in around him, with even his waist and hips brushing against the sides. He waddled to the door, struggling to fit his belly through first before falling to the floor with a sickening squelch.

Templeton moaned, hearing the muffled sounds of the chickens within his belly mixed with his sloshing. Though some of the hens escaped, his stomach felt fuller and fatter than it had ever been before. “*Hilp*, what a gorge.”

“*Orp*, you’re telling me.”

Templeton squinted through his dazed vision at the orange furred ball of fuzz in front of him. He was surprised to see a young fox laying on his back; his stomach also swollen with the muffled squawking of chickens within it. He licked at a paw, grinning with satisfaction while looking back to the rat.

“I had no idea, *urp*, how to get inside that little house, but I’m glad you came along. I know plenty of other farms nearby with some nice fat hens like these. You break in, gobble up any hens you can and I’ll gorge on any who try to escape. What do you say?”

Just as he was with the cat, Templeton would have naturally been terrified meeting the fox up close. But the night's gluttony had made him enormous, towering over the fox and stretching three times as wide. His gurgling stomach urged for further gluttony, and the rat salivated at the mere thought of how much space the fox would fill up inside it.

“I’ll visit those farms soon enough,” Templeton lumbered his way over. “But for now, I’ll finish eating all the hens here.”

Before the fox could roll over to a standing position, the rat fell over his lower body. He tried kicking and wiggling his way free, but his footpaws were already trailing down the rat’s throat. Templeton stood upright, letting out muffled moans as the fox’s legs entered his stomach, growing his body to lengths he never thought possible. The fox’s pleas were then silenced as Templeton pushed his muzzle to the back of his throat with both paws, and closed his mouth. Belching and patting his stomach, he smiled with pride as it undulated with all the animals he had eaten.

Despite feeling beyond satiated, the rat was too far gone into his gluttonous state to stop eating now. Walking on his hind legs, he took wide strides over to the feed shed. Just tall enough to reach the latch, he opened the door, drooling at the sight of all the grain bins, sacks of oats, corn, and crates of vegetables yet to be sold to the local markets.

Templeton greedily filled his face with everything available. He dove head first into the grain bins, guzzled a waterfall of corn and oats from their sacks, and ate all the vegetables whole. With each passing minute, he grew into a fatter-more monstrous animal. Each of his haunches ballooned to the size of beach balls, and his arms as thick as the sacks of oats he ate from. Rolls upon rolls coated his body, squishing against one another in an avalanche of fat. His cheeks were like cantaloupes, and constantly squished against multiple rolls of abundant neck blubber. All the while his titanic stomach became more amorphous in nature, overflowing with so much food that even the chickens, fox, and cat were less able to squirm around.

Halfway through his gorge, the rat belched as he finished up another sack. Mouth dripping with drool, he stopped short of the last grain bin, noticing two visitors standing by the door. The goose and gander scowled at him, eyes ablaze with scolding judgment.

“Well would you look at you,” said the gander, “it’s not enough you have to finish Wilbur’s food every day, now here you are eating everyone else’s food as well.”

“You’re utterly repulsive,” said the goose, “a greedy, gluttonous, wobbling mass of fur and lard. You’re hardly a rat at all anymore. Just a mindless eating machine.”

Templeton walked over to them, arching his back just to help move his stomach forward. “*Hilp-hilp*, you’re so right,” said the rat. “I’m definitely, *huff*, all those things, *hic-hilp*. But I’m still, *bwooorp*, definitely, *oof*, a rat.”

Leaning forward, he grabbed the two birds by the neck, effortlessly shoving both into his mouth. With his newfound swallowing prowess, he didn’t even bother pushing them down with his paws. His throat muscles pulled them both in, forming two watermelon sized orbs slithering down his gullet. Grinning, he patted both with a paw, heaving a content sigh once they entered his gut.

“*Buuuuraaap*, only a rat, *hic-hilp*, can achieve…this level of gluttony.”

Finishing up the remaining food, Templeton turned to the shed doorway. His belly spilled outside in a cacophony of sloshing, both food and farm animal roiling about. He grabbed at the door frame to pull himself out; his meaty waistline and hips squeezed against the frame’s edges. Popping his way through, he collapsed onto his gut, sinking into its gelatinous mass as if falling into a heap of melting butter. He moaned with ecstasy, squeezing and shaking at each lard laden inch he had managed to grow.

The nearby sheep witnessed this, snorting in frustration. “Would you keep it down? Some of us are trying to rest.”

Templeton looked over, grinning from ear to ear while drool dripped down his multiple chins. “No problem,” the rat hauled himself to the pen entrance. “I know someplace, *hic-hilp*, real quiet for you all. Hehe, you might find it, *hic-hilp*, a bit crowded though.”

Opening and closing the gate behind him, he gradually crept up to the sheep. The five sheep huddled together, backing themselves toward the corner of the pen as the rat ominously approached them. Eyes were furrowed, his mouth dripped with saliva like a ravenous wolf. His massive stomach blorped and gurgled louder than the snarl of any predator; its size closing off any opening to run past him the closer he got.

The rat wobbled his stomach with both paws while exposing a toothy grin. “*Hic-hilp*, this whole farm, *orp*, will turn me into…a mountain of lard, *hic-hilp*, by the end…of the night.”

Smacking his belly, he licked the drool from his lips, and leaned over his belly. He grabbed the first sheep by the legs, pulling it up to his open maw. He stuffed its muzzle inside before his powerful throat went to work, swallowing the sheep’s entire head before working on the body. With the sheep’s girth being half as large as his own belly, devouring it whole proved as exhilarating an experience reminiscent of swallowing food whole at the fair for the very first time.

The other four sheep frantically bleated at the sight of their kin being gobbled up before their very eyes. The horses in the pen across and the cows in the barn all bellowed with noise, adding to the panic throughout the farm. Templeton added to the racket himself, belching and hiccuping after each sheep he devoured. His stomach also created an ungodly row with each sheep that entered it like a wrecking ball.

Drunk with gluttony, Templeton ate the final two sheep at the same time, stretching the absolute limits of his mouth and throat before pushing four hooves down with both of his paws. His stomach surged forward with a thunderous squelch, breaking down the fence post in front of him. Undulating uncontrollably, his belly had grown to half the size of Zuckerman’s truck, and growing him as tall as any man. Despite his footpaws being buried under his hay bale like haunches, the weight of his body hardly affected his ability to lift a paw off the ground.

Due to all the commotion, the kitchen lights in the Zuckerman house turned on. Noticing this, the rat took one wide step over the other toward the side of the house. He eagerly waited by the door, hearing voices from the inside and the bustling of footsteps. Lurvy stormed out the door with a shotgun in his hands, firing off a round in the air as the rat’s claws grabbed him by the shoulders and lifted him off the ground as if he were some child. He screamed before the rat stuffed him in his mouth, tilting his head back and swallowing him with ease, like going down a slide. Licking his chops, Templeton groaned as he faced the doorway, hearing a set of footsteps run off down the hall.

The rat’s belly filled up the entire door frame, causing the wood to snap and break off as he forced his way through, leaving a sizable hole in his wake. Trudging through the living room, he knocked over portraits from the walls and decor from tables, pushing aside anything in front of his belly. He took a right turn from the kitchen, squeezing through the tight fitting hallway to the last room. Pouring into the room, he found Zuckerman and his wife huddled up in the corner.

A brief struggle ensued, coupled with panicked wails before the house grew silent, broken immediately by a hearty belch. Tempted by its coziness, Templeton rolled on his back onto Zuckerman's king sized bed. The wooden frame instantly snapped, breaking apart every plank that held it together. Practically sinking into the floor, the mattress flattened like dough under the immense weight of the rat. His vast corpulence completely enveloped the bed all around him, spilling over the edges of what was left and touching the floor, which was now a mere foot down. Resting his back against the back wall, he sloppily grinned, taking stock of his landscape of rippling-bubbling fur.

“*Hic-hilp*, this has…*oooorrp*...been a night.”

The rat lifted his heavy arms, dropping his paws onto his belly with a loud slap. A sickening squelch resounded throughout the room, while the impact caused his blubber to jiggle like waves in a turbulent storm. Amid the deafening sloshing were the muffled voices of his prey, still pushing and bumping into the well padded interior of his vast stomach. A wave of his rippling fur sloshed itself forward, amassing as one large mound before barreling toward him like a tsunami. Pouring over his broad chest, the wave of undulating lard crashed right into him, squishing against every lush roll that formed his neck fat and his pillow-like cheeks.

His ears heard his prey swishing through the sea of indigested gorge; along with his stomach’s audible burbling as it produced even more fat. The slightest pressure of his digits or poke from his muzzle created a symphony of soupy sounds. Groaning with pleasurable satisfaction, his belly sloshed away from him, returning to a center position and swaying in all directions.

“*Hic-hilp*, how fat…could I possibly, *hilp*, get,” said Templeton in a husky tone. Thinking back to all he had gorged on this night, his mouth erupted in a fountain of drool after recalling the horses in the last pen, and all the cows in the barn. “*Hic-hilp*, guess I’ll find out.”

Giving his blob-like mass a wobble, he groaned with exertion, rolling himself back to a standing position. Demolishing the doorway as he squeezed through, the hallway proved an even tighter fit, like squeezing through his tunnels beneath the trough after a month of overeating. In the kitchen, he cleared out all the food he could find in every cabinet and everything in the fridge, down to the last clove of garlic. He waddled to the front door, leaving an even larger hole when exiting before heading back to the barn area.

Cutting across the sheep’s pen, his glorping belly flattened the fence posts with little effort. The three horses frantically galloped about as he approached them. It felt surreal how just this morning, he couldn’t even reach up to their knees. Yet now after a night of constant gorging, he stood a head taller, ready to add them all to his ever growing mass.

The stallion of the group attempted to run through the fence gap Templeton created, but was immediately caught by the rat, buckling under his superior weight. As he fought back, kicking and wildly thrashing about, the impact of his hooves against Templeton’s multi-fat layered gut felt like dainty hands kneading a wad of dough. Like the sheep, the horse pushed his comprehension of gluttony to heights unknown. Its large body caused his throat to massively bulge, like a croaking bullfrog. His chest swelled outward, squishing against his neck rolls and cheeks. Swallowing the hooves, the rat’s gut violently expanded another several feet, nearly knocking him backwards.

He let loose a husky belch, taunting the remaining two mares by slapping his jello-like gut. Cornering them, he gobbled them up before making his way toward the barn. The raucous din of the cows bellowed with the rat’s own laborious exertions. Ten healthy heifers made up each of the barn’s stables, five  both on his left and right. With all that beef adding to his corpulence, he predicted he’d amass more lard than even he could handle.

Like a kid in a candy store, Templeton gleefully went through the barn one stable at a time. With each cow he swallowed whole, he felt every roll and fold coating his body grow a few inches thicker. His widening waist and hips struggled for supremacy over the other, rubbing together with each step. His head gradually sank deeper into his neck rolls, squishing against his cheeks and the back of his head. The girth of his forelegs squished against flab in any direction he moved them, making it difficult to lift the next cow up to his mouth. All the while, his blob of a belly grew into an undulating ocean of lard, knocking over hay bales and breaking anything it happened to come across.

By the time he finished gobbling up the final cow, the rat had finally reached the point of unbearable fullness he was more familiar with. Forelegs outspread and head craned toward the barn’s ceiling, Templeton moaned with pleasure, basking in the decadence of feeling so overglutted and overgorged he could hardly move. He stood near the front of the barn, occupying most of the entryway with his massive belly. Unable to pat it himself, he allowed his hiccups to jiggle every inch of his body, rubbing his rolls together and giving him the physical pleasure he needed.

“*Hic-hilp*, such an amazing, *hic-hilp*, gorge. But…I feel like, *hic-hilp*, I’ve forgotten something.”

As if on cue, a sudden sneeze came from one of the stables beside him. He barely managed to turn his head, noticing a bale of hay at the very back shaking. The strands of hay fell to the floor, revealing a pink snout and floppy ears. Grinning under his flabby cheeks, Templeton licked his chops.

“Ah yes, *hic-hilp*, how can I forget about, *hic-hilp*, good ol Wilbur.”

The pig pressed his back to the barn as the rat collapsed his body toward him, crushing the adjacent stables with his blubber before pinning him in place; their muzzles touching face to face.

“T-T-Templeton, please. You already ate Zuckerman and everyone else. You don’t have to eat me too, right? Remember all the times I let you eat first? Or when I saved food for you even before that? We’re friends, right?”

“It’s like you said, *hic-hilp*. I’m enjoying as much food, *hic-hilp*, as I can. And I always have room for bacon.”

Thrusting his head forward, Templeton lapped up the pig like a pelican eating a fish, bobbing his head and devouring Wilbur with ease. Sighing with contentment, his stomach suddenly became a hive of activity, bubbling and burbling like an active volcano. As if some magical spell were cast on him, the rat felt his corpulence vastly growing at an alarming rate. His paws were swallowed up by his thickening limbs, and the intense feeling of fullness he felt was overshadowed by the growing pressure of his blubbery body. He felt his blubber destroying the other stables around him, while his back and rear pressed against the wooden beams holding the ceiling together. Somehow, Wilbur caused his body to swell with fat, gradually filling up the entire barn.

“More, *hic-hilp*,” Templeton moaned, “I want…more. More farms, *hic-hilp*, more farmers, more animals! Oh, how a rat, *hic-hilp*, can glut…glut…glut, *hic-hilp*, gluuut!”

As he bellowed his praise for the feast, the rolls surrounding his head swallowed him up, muffling his voice and the sounds of the collapsing barn around him. All was dark and quiet, peaceful like the coming dawn when the crickets cease their chirping and the waking songs of birds fill the air. The rat felt light as a feather, drifting through the gentle streams of sleep before a voice broke his slumber.

“Here Pig, suey!”

Templeton groaned as he opened his half shut eyes, squinting at the blinding ray of sunlight shining down on him. He was curious to see the light coming from one of the open barn windows, and he was once again his woodchuck-like size. The sounds of other animals could be heard all around him; the scent of morning slops signaled it was time for breakfast.

Rolling off of his patch of hay, the rat waddled along on all fours to the front of the barn. He found Wilbur laying on his manure pile as usual, waiting for him to have his fill of slops first before eating himself.

“Morning, Templeton,” said the pig. “Had trouble sleeping? You were mumbling to yourself a lot.”

“I’m fine, Wilbur. It was just a dream.” He looked down to his stomach, still feeling burdened by yesterday’s dinner. Wearing a toothy grin, he wobbled it with both paws. “A very good dream.”

“What was it about?”

“Eh, it’s not important. Say…you’ve seen any cats around lately?”

Wilbur raised an eyebrow. “I haven’t actually. I’ll ask the others, but I don’t think anyone’s seen cats on the farm for a long time.”

“Yeah, it’s a shame. Well, if you or anyone sees any cats roaming around, you let me know, alright?”

“Sure. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Right,” the rat smirked, “good looking out for your ol pal, Templeton.”

As he walked off to his slops, Wilbur couldn’t help but notice the rat’s curious reaction. The glint in his eyes was like that of hearing news about a secret lunch he overlooked behind the trash, or the trash can being filled with week old holiday leftovers. He licked his chops at the mention of a cat, although he also could have been eager for breakfast. One thing was certain, judging by his head held high and the strut in his step, whatever the rat dreamt had left him in a cheery mood.