Part of my personal headcannon is that the rats in Ratatouille are descendants from a similar, French program.
Haha! Me too! The lee of the stone!
In the book, Mrs. F planned to move out of the cinderblock house but couldn’t because of Timothy’s pneumonia. That’s why they had to move it. The rats did it with block & tackle, after overcoming various obstacles. I vaguely recall they drugged the cat, Dragon.
Oh, yeah. I think that’s where I learned pneumonia, too. (Or at least how it’s spelled.)
Mrs. Frisby drugged the cat as a quid pro quo for the rats, as I recall - they didn’t need to drug him for the cinderblock move, but they needed it for their own stuff and they extracted that as payment.
In the film this is how her husband was killed, drugging the cat (happens off-screen, before the beginning in fact). Was this the same in the book?