Splats, Hats, and Lots of Rats
Rats have a vested interest in keeping history horrible.
Not that history needs rats to be horrible – rats take advantage of the fact that history is horrible, they don't make history horrible for its own sake. Still, history's generally become less horrible over the course of the last century (maybe), so whatever the case, rats want to keep it horrible.
When humans began building cities, history became horrible for some people. Rats moved in, and took advantage of the abundance of food. They spread disease – not by being horrible, but by beings rats. So when mankind's history led to war, and war led to lots of splats, the rats moved in to take advantage of said splats. Bodies provide lots of food you see.
Also hats. At some point in history (or really, various points across various cultures), hats were invented. Rats like hats. Don't know why. Maybe it's because they can hide under them from cats. Or rats have a sense of style. Heck, I dunno.
Rats liked it when ships travelled from one continent to another. Usually when that happened there were splats. So the rats came, the splats happened, and the rats enjoyed themselves. Also islands. Islands are nice. History has humans coming to islands, and rats do good there. And when the splats get so big that giant splats are made in the ground, and humans wear funny hats from other humans trying to splat them, then the rats become so numerous that they don't even need to be afraid of cats.
Of course, history's changing. And history may be coming to an end. Planet's warming up, food's running out, there's more and more humans appearing. So while that means hats, and potentially lots of splats when society collapses, and they may take the cats with them, it means that if history ends, the rats will have no splats, no hats, and they'll even have to make do without mats. So since the rats don't want to say "drats," they will, of course, try to keep history horrible.
And that's the end of that.