In the middle of the night, Joey was sleeping in his bedroom upstairs when he heard the twins crying loudly from their room and demanding yet another feeding. Monica was actually thrilled to get up and feed the babies this time, because she could use the nursing gadget again, while having her hands free to hold and rock the babies.

After a while, Joey heard the twins quiet down, and Monica hummed soothingly to them. But before Joey could fall asleep again, he heard noise just outside his door, and he turned to see Chandler entering his bedroom.

"Chandler?" Joey rubbed his eyes and sat up.

Chandler looked at him and unsuccessfully tried to stifle his giggles. "I'm--I'm sorry. Did I wake you?"

"No, the babies did. What's so funny?"

Chandler sat down on the edge of Joey's bed and whispered, "Nothing, nothing. I was just helping Monica put on the thing, and I-I couldn't keep a straight face watching her feed the babies."

"What? Why?"

"I--" Chandler covered his face with a pillow to muffle his laughter. He knew that he was being immature, but he couldn't help it. "I just got fixated on her boobs again, you know, and I kept thinking about how big they would have been if she had got pregnant, or if she got that boob job you lied about."

"Oh, you mean--?" Joey motioned with his hands to show big breasts.

Chandler nodded. "And, and I realized that I was getting too excited, and I better not think about that, or Monica would think I was a pervert! So I tried to think of the most unsexy thing I could think of, and out of nowhere I pictured Frank Jr. breastfeeding the triplets." He broke into hysterical fits at the absurdity.

"Shh!" Joey warned him. "Don't let her hear you!"

"I kn-kn-know!" He didn't want Monica to get the wrong idea from his laughter, and think that he was making fun of her breastfeeding device. He really wished that Monica didn't feel so insecure about being an adoptive mother. She was doing just fine, yet her perfectionist streak demanded that she do everything better and have an impossible amount of control. She kept wanting things to be unrealistically perfect, with both the house and the babies, and who knew how she'd handle it when she went back to work in another month.

Chandler's laughter was infectious, and despite his disapproval, Joey started to giggle uncontrollably too. He shook Chandler's shoulders and said, "Stop it! Stop it!"

But neither of them could stop, and Joey wrestled Chandler onto the bed until their sides ached from laughing so hard. Then they just collapsed together and lay close to each other, completely out of breath and feeling quite silly.

After a moment, Chandler turned to Joey and managed to speak again. "I missed you."

Joey smiled and whispered back, "I missed you too."

Chandler patted his arm. "I'm so glad you came to visit this weekend, Joe. This was a great surprise."

Joey shrugged. "Well, I had to do something, you know? You promised that you'd make more time for me, remember? But you didn't even visit or call."

"Yeah, I know. I'm sorry, Joe. I just got too busy around here." Chandler squeezed his shoulder. "But I'll make more time for you, if you'll keep visiting us."

"Sure."

"Okay. Good night." Chandler hugged him one more time, then got up from the bed and left, returning to his and Monica's bedroom.

"Good night," Joey called after him.

After the weekend in Westchester, Joey came to pick up Chick Jr. and Duck Jr. from Phoebe and Mike. However, when he arrived at their apartment, the Hanigans were having a heated argument.

"You murderer!" she yelled at Mike.

Joey was shocked. "Whoa! What's going on?"

Phoebe pointed at her husband with outrage, "While we were babysitting the birds, I asked Mike about what happened to those rat babies we had before, and he told me that he murdered them!"

"I did not murder them, Phoebe. I took them to the vet, who put them to sleep."

"You promised me that you'd find good homes for them, not kill them!"

Mike protested, "Phoebe, they were rats! Seven rat babies. Who on earth is gonna want rat babies?"

"You never know! This is New York, and people have all kinds of pets, like chickens, ducks, and monkeys."

Mike rolled his eyes and wished that her group of friends didn't have such unusual tastes when it came to pets. He shrugged. "Okay, fine, some people have weird pets, but the only responses we got to our classified ads were people from laboratories who thought that we were breeding rats for animal testing."

Phoebe was still angry at him. "Well, you shouldn't have lied to me then! If you couldn't find any nice families to take care of Bob's babies, then you should've, um, taken them out to the countryside, you know, with Suzy the mouse to watch over them. Then they could all be free and maybe meet a friendly possum and a wise cracking owl."

Mike sighed and spoke with as much patience as he could muster. "But they're city rodents, Phoebe. You don't know if they could survive out in the wild, or if they'd just get eaten by the first fox to come along, or even get killed by a farmer who sets out traps or uses pesticides on his crop."

Phoebe gasped and cried when she imagined those terrible scenarios, and Joey hugged her comfortingly, giving Mike a nasty glare that accused, "How could you?!"

Mike knew that he'd been too blunt, but Joey wouldn't let him get close to her. "I'm sorry, Phoebe, but it's a cruel world out there. But you just said yourself that you didn't want me to lie to you."

She sniffled against Joey's shoulder. "But--but those babies were our responsibility, Mike! We should have found some way to save Bob's babies. Like, um, maybe you could've--could've had them neutered by the vet and brought them back here to live. Then we could take care of the babies until they grew up and died naturally."

Mike shook his head and told her, "The vet said that the rats weren't gonna survive long anyway, Phoebe. Apparently the formula we were feeding them wasn't a good substitute for the rat milk from their mother, so they were getting sick. I just did the only practical thing I could, to end their suffering."

"Ohhh!" Phoebe got even more upset now. "It's all your fault for killing their mother with that awful trap! You could have killed Suzy too in that death trap!"

"I didn't know about Suzy, okay? Or that Bob had babies. Look, if you have pet rodents, Phoebe, then you could at least keep them in cages or warn people before they accidentally eat your rat crackers."

"Cage them up?!" She pulled out of Joey's embrace and looked shocked. "What, and treat them like prisoners, with--with their tiny paws scratching at the bars, and being forced to run around forever in a squeaky little hamster wheel? No! No!"

"Okay, okay!" Mike felt as exasperated as Ross did back when Phoebe thought her mother Lily had come back as a cat. "Fine, but I didn't know that you had so many... dependents living in your kitchen cabinets... near all your food." He grimaced at how unsanitary that was, and he was glad that he'd convinced Phoebe to give away her mouse Suzy to one of her kooky friends. "I'm sorry about the rat babies, but it was too late to do anything for them by then, so I just, you know, had them put down peacefully so they could reunite with their mother Bob in heaven." He hoped that he had sufficiently mollified her spiritual beliefs. "Trust me, they're better off now, Phoebe."

"How can I trust you, when you didn't even consult me about the babies first? And you didn't let me try to find some other rat mother to nurse them back to health, or let me hold a funeral for them like we had for Bob!"

Mike sighed and tried not to roll his eyes at the memory of the funeral that Phoebe had actually thrown for Bob the rat, even having the rat cremated by a friend and keeping the ashes in a tiny jar next to her grandmother's ashes on the mantle.

"Well, I-I was just trying to spare your feelings back then, and let you think that they'd gone off to nice homes, like you wanted." He tried to hug her, but was rebuffed. "Come on, Pheebs. I don't know why you can't be more realistic about this, after what happened to the chick and the duck."

Joey looked concerned. "What happened to the chick and the duck?"

Phoebe hit Mike for his indiscretion. "Nothing, nothing! Joey, you better take your birds and get out of here, before Mike does something bad to them."

"Okay!" Joey picked up the pet carrier and left with Chick Jr. and Duck Jr. in a hurry.

After Joey had gone, Mike turned to his wife apologetically, "I'm sorry! I forgot that he didn't know. But look, Phoebe, if you can handle telling Joey that his pets went off to some farm instead of dying, then why can't you understand what I did with the rat babies? I mean, would you have preferred to keep the illusion that they were adopted by some imaginary families?"

"You don't understand!" Phoebe snapped back. "I trusted you, Mike, but you lied to me and murdered Bob's babies. Plus, you killed Bob, you complained about her funeral, and you wouldn't stop nagging me until I gave away Suzy too. You're--you're no better than your snooty parents eating veal! Or Gary, when he shot that bird." That was still an unpleasant memory to her. "I bet you wouldn't have had any problem with Bob, Suzy, or the babies if they had all been kittens or puppies or something else cute. It's like my song Smelly Cat, you know, where nobody wants Smelly Cat just because it's not clean enough and it doesn't smell nice enough. It's like how people treated me when I was homeless; I was like garbage to them. Only my other homeless friends treated me like I was still a person."

Realizing now what a big deal this was to her, Mike felt remorseful for his insensitivity, and he sincerely apologized. "I'm sorry." He hugged her and tried to kiss her. "I'm so sorry, Phoebe. I promise, I won't do anything like that again."

"You better not." She turned away from him and went to their bedroom, slamming the door and locking it. She wasn't so sure anymore that she wanted to have human babies with Mike after all.

Outside the door, Mike kept trying to apologize, and he even offered to hold a belated funeral for the rat babies.

Over the next several weeks, Joey periodically visited Chandler and Monica in Westchester, but he no longer trusted Mike to take care of the baby birds, so he insisted on only Phoebe watching them, or else he would drop the birds off with Ross and Rachel for the weekend.

Chandler was glad to have Joey keep visiting them, because they had so much fun together. Also, Joey helped out a lot around the house, and that left Monica in a much better, saner mood than usual. She was even starting to decorate some of the empty rooms now, though it was on a tight budget. Seeing how good Joey was with the twins, Chandler began to wonder whether he could somehow ask Joey to be their godfather without offending Ross. Well, maybe it could be Chandler's way of getting back at Ross and Rachel for not wanting him to raise Emma alone. He would have to discuss the issue with Monica first.

But then they ran into some financial trouble. Monica started checking out the local daycare facilities and nannies in the neighborhood, since she was going to return to work at the restaurant soon. Everything was so expensive in Westchester, though, and as she looked through their bills and analyzed their budget, she realized that they wouldn't be able to pay for everything. At least not until Chandler could get another promotion at work.

"Maybe we should get another loan from Joey," she suggested.

"Joey? Don't you remember what happened the last time?"

"Sure, but come on, he owes you, Chandler. He's making plenty of money on the soap, and he doesn't even need it all. Why can't we ask him to help us out, after all the food and money he's taken from us over the years?"

Chandler remained reluctant to do it, but Monica insisted. "Stop letting your pride get in the way! Remember when Joey was too proud to accept your charity, and you had to invent the game of cups to make him take your money? Don't be so stubborn, Chandler, and think of our babies. If you won't ask Joey for a loan, then I will."

"Okay, okay!"