Rats, Cats and Diplomats is the license to prick the diplomatic balloon. Insiders like to project diplomacy as management of the grave international issues and crises. Detractors call it a whirl on the cocktail circuit. Both are caricatures. Diplomacy involves painstaking work on international matters, sometimes big in terms of national interest but usually small. It also entails interminable protocol. And a lot of socialization, compensated by an automatic entry to high, and low, society of the host country. Underneath it all are bureaucratic shenanigans, personal foibles, random developments, and funny episodes. Those are more the author’s themes, which might raise a smile or two from the reader.