Alone in the parade ground, Robodog came to a stop.

“I must be a real dog!” he said defiantly. “I can bark and chase and roll over…”

“Who are you talking to?” came a voice.

“WHO GOES THERE?” demanded Robodog.

There followed the sound of a whistle.

“WOO-HOO! Down here!” said the voice.

The robot looked down to see a rat climbing out of a storm drain.

“A rat! I must blast it!” said Robodog, his laser-blaster eye protruding, ready to fire.

“I’m not a rat!” lied the rat, raising his paws in panic. “I am just an unusually large and rather ugly mouse.”

“Does not compute!” said Robodog.

“What are you on about now?”

Robodog used his X-ray eye to scan the creature. His verdict was firm but fair. “You do not look, sound or smell anything like a mouse.”

“Well, us mouses, I mean mice, come in all shapes and sizes, just like you dogs.”

This stopped Robodog in his tracks. “You just said I am a dog?”

“Well, what else are you?” spluttered the rat.

“I don’t know. The other dogs said I wasn’t a real dog… It made me feel sad. A tear welled in my eye.”

The rat was, for once, lost for words. He climbed out of the drain and looked the mechanical creature up and down. “Why would anyone say such a thing? Course you are a dog! Just like I am a mouse, right? No blasting needed.”

Robodog nodded his head.

“I am Robodog.”

“Imaginative name for a robot dog! My name’s Ratty.”

“Strange name for a mouse.”

“Oh! That’s what I told me mum and dad, but would they listen?”

“I don’t know. Would they?”

“Never mind! Look, one thing to remember, Robodog, is that in this life you can be whatever you want to be.”

“What do you mean, Ratty?”

“If you wish with all your heart to be a dog, then who says you can’t be?”

“I don’t have a heart to wish from,” said Robodog sorrowfully. “Maybe that’s why the other dogs think I am not real.”

“Of course you have a heart,” replied Ratty.

“Do I? I have rockets, and a laser, but I don’t know if I have a heart.”

“If you can feel something, if you can cry like the rest of us, then in there somewhere must be your heart!”

With that, he put his grubby little paw on the robot’s chest.

“I can feel something else now,” said Robodog. “I can feel something warm and fuzzy.”

“That’s happiness, I bet. Now you are feeling it, I am feeling it too!”

Robodog thought for a moment. “Maybe I can feel something, but I am still nothing like the other dogs.”

“Who wants to be like everyone else? Just like I am not your average mouse, you are not your average dog! That is what makes us both special. Now come on, get back in that shed with your head held high, and get some rest.”

“Thank you, Ratty!”

“And thank you, Robodog, for not blasting me!”

“Of course!”

“This could be the start of a beautiful friendship,” said the rat as he disappeared down the drain.