Eeckee the Rat

Eeckee the Rat was a comic strip made by the Dozerfleet founder during the Cormorant era, about the life and exploits of a luckless rat living in a suburban house's wall. Originally intended to be some sort of parody of Eek the Cat, the strip took on a flavor and purpose all its own.

Plot
The strip consisted of a patchwork of several sketches that could have been compiled to form episodes. The plot of them was essentially the same, but with a change of theme. Eeckee was a rat that lived in a hole in the wall in a suburban house. The owner was almost never at home. But, he was the second owner of a deranged dog/alligator hybrid with human-level intelligence and a sadistic streak.

Eeckee, who only spoke in varying lengths of "Eeeee," would often try to find some way to get himself some cheese or other food item to snack on. The dog, named "Harpy" after the creatures from Greek mythology, would always find some way to thwart the rat's plans that involved extreme laughter from the dog and extreme pain/torture/near-death to the rat. The sketches followed a Loony Tunes/Tom and Jerry format, so that after each sketch, everything returned to the way it was had the sketch never happened.

Sometimes accompanied by a rat with boxing gloves on who went by the name of "Gloves," Eeckee would almost always die in some sadistic fashion at the end of every episode.

The many deaths of the rat
Eeckee has died in the following ways, whether implicitly or in plain view:


 * 1) Swallowed whole. (pilot sketch, "Role Switch")
 * 2) Shredded to an indeterminate pile of fur.
 * 3) Sawed in two.
 * 4) Electrocuted. ("Wire You Doing That?", All For Cheese)
 * 5) Titanic-rat sunk by iceberg-dog. ("Water You Trying to Do?")
 * 6) Launched as a firework. ("The Sound of Independence")
 * 7) Torn limb from limb, then head ripped off while still screaming.
 * 8) Torched.
 * 9) TNT.
 * 10) Countless other deaths.

Memorable sketches
Most of the sketches made of Eeckee were lost over time, and only a few of them are remembered. Several of the sketches were compiled into a short collection called All For Cheese, discussing the rat's desperation to get past the dog's deviant traps and finally get himself something to eat. It easily became the most popular sketch done by the Dozerfleet founder in the presence of his eight grade classmates in 1998. It went up against the Adam Schlomer-written piece Bob-a-lob-a-Ding-Dong, which won particular ire from the teacher due to the story's numerous (yet humorous) self-contradictions.

Water You Trying to Do?
The sketch "Water You Trying to Do?," in which the rat is the Titanic and the dog the iceberg, was created a total of three times before being abandoned. The sketch is memorable because as the ship cracks in two like an egg, a Ford Model T can clearly be seen on deck. This is to emphasize that the sketch is poking fun at the Titanic film.

Role Switch
"Role Switch" was a tie-in sketch featuring The Bison. The heads of the characters were switched and placed on the wrong bodies, so that the Harp Dog had the Bison's body and the Bison had the rat's body. Eeckee himself found himself with the dog's body, utterly confused by the move. The sketch ends with the dog-on-the-Bison's-body presumably swallowing both of the others whole.

Characters

 * Eeckee is an unassuming and ill-fated rat who lives in a hole in the wall in a suburban house. He dreams of eating cheese from the fridge, but usually finds himself the butt of the house's dog's sadistic and murderous practical jokes.
 * Gloves is a usually-mute and fairly useless friend of Eeckee's, who is usually killed off even more quickly. He wears boxing gloves for no reason whatsoever.
 * Harpy is a dog/alligator hybrid with a sadistic sense of humor. In a twist of fate, he loves the mailman but hates meter readers.  His owner is almost never around and never depicted above the legs; and gives Harpy free reign to do almost anything he wants with the house.  He usually spends his spare time coming up with ways to torture rats for fun.

Scrapped ideas
Before the series as a whole was scrapped, there were several tie-in ideas that were rejected, brought about by the founder's brother who fancied himself as doing Eeckee's voice. One of these was that The Bison would interfere with the dog's antics by slurping him, thereby saving the rat from the dog's jaws. Another idea was that the dog would eventually move to "a higher plane of existence," and would hire a cow to terrorize the rat.

The "Role Switch" episode was made as a response to the idea of the Bison's constant interference. Just as the involvement of the Bison in this was considered, so also was it considered at one time that Eeckee and Slushy shared the same universe, knitted together by a supernatural mango that rolled into scenes and anthropomorphized any animals that got too close.

Another idea is that Eeckee, after an encounter with the mango, would become able to instantly regenerate any severed part of his body simply by drinking water from the Grand River in Michigan. As the Grand River water became more and more a part of his being, he could regenerate at will. The dog would then acquire similar abilities. Finally, an episode of the rat tearing the dog apart out of frustration and revenge was eventually rejected.