From urbanization to biomedical science, rats can be found in the foundations of modernity. Communicating ultrasonically above the ~20 kHz frequency limit of human hearing, rats are also well adapted for the human-built environment and its anthropogenic noise. For the sound installation Urban Intonation , the author recorded rats on the streets of New York City with an ultrasonic microphone and resampled and remixed the audio for playback over a human public address system. Repositioning rat sounds as something recognizable, if not intelligible, as speech prompts humans to reconsider their relationship to their oftreviled nonhuman cohabitants.