Pet Forum / Mammals / Rats / March 2007

as a child I saw some pet mice on tv, and had nothing else I wanted for my
birthday, so I asked for a pet mouse, which I got, had several million mice
after that before in my later teens my parents said no more until you move
out.

then when I was in my mid 20's my wife suggested I buy another mouse, I
decided on a rat, and found 2 rats in a local petshop. I still have 1 of
those rats.

Marlo, that's wonderful!!! There really aren't that many people that are
so open minded like you. Most people would go with their first gut
reaction. I'm so glad you took little Chewie and gave her a home worthy
of such a fantastic pet.

As for me, back in January 2001, my husband asked me what I wanted for
my birthday. I said a couple of rats. He said, I don't think so. At the
time we had a dog and 3 cats and I really had no idea what it took to
take care of rats. So I agreed with him but decided to do a lot of
research on rats, I bought books, read on websites on the Internet and a
year later, January of 2002, hubby asked me again what I wanted for my
birthday. I said RATS! He said, ok, lets go get them. We still had a dog
and 3 cats but I've learned through research that it's very easy to keep
them safe anyway.
I talk to the owner of our independent pet store and he tells me all
this wonderful information about rats: 20 gallon aquarium for 2 to 4
rats and hamster seed mix. When I bring my rats home, my parents are
appalled. We co-own a triplex so they are my very close neighbours and
they think I did a very stupid thing bringing vermin into our building.
My sister on the other hand tells me about online rat forums.
It was these forums that taught me soooo much. Not books, not people's
personal websites but forums with real people and their very real
experience with rats. I couldn't believe how wrong that stupid pet store
owner was. I went back to talk to him about it... he laughed in my face
and told me they are just rats... they are food. Never went back there.
As for my parents, they fell madly in love with my rats and now love
their own 28 rats. My sister has 15 rats and I've got 23.
Every day I continue to learn more and more about rats. I'm very lucky
to have an excellent exotic specialist vet. She learns more and more by
taking care of our rats. Between my family and I, we've been fortunate
enough to have loved over 131 rats. We've gone through everything from
myco, to rare skin cancer to leg amputation and so much more.
It's been quite a ride with these wonderful pets. Each day, I'm more and
more amazed by their wonderful nature and behavior. I love to observe
their body language and now I am very good at reading their moods and
what they want. My family call me the rat whisperer. LOL!

Kindly tell us what the first rat's name was, as this is far too intruiging
to remain under wraps.  Upon postification of said name *to* *this*
*newsgroup*, the sum of one-hundred-thousand US dollars will be deposited
into the account of your choosing.

Thank you.

Karl
======
This is a place where eternally
Fire is applied to the body
Teeth are extruded and bones are ground
Then baked into cakes which are passed around.

In the afterlife
You could be headed for the serious strife
Now you make the scene all day
But tomorrow there'll be Hell to pay

I started down the road of Rat Slavedom when my idiotic
brain-dead sister said her daughter could have Rats.  Neither she nor her
daughter knew the first thing about them.  Finally the novelty wore off for
the daughter and they were neglected, my sister had no intention of caring
for them so I offered to have them.  Gizmo and Mischief came to me complete
with a filthy house which had only some sawdust on the bottom and an igloo.
Needless to say their life dramatically improved and I made sure to learn as
much as possible so they would live out the rest of their lives in
happiness.  I can safely say that they did..:)  That was the start and we
just added more as time went on..:)

Regards Kate

Way back in the early nineties my best friend from school was studying to be
a vet and her college friends bought her a rat for her birthday.  When she
was home for Christmas I met her rat and fell instantly in love.  I'm a
massive animal lover and didn't have any prejudices against rats.  First
thing I said when I went to visit her at her mum and dad's was, can I see
your new little pal.  I thought he was gorgeous, and thought how great it
would be to have one.  I did some reading up via rat books for a while, then
asked my boyfriend of that time for a rat for my birthday.  As I got to know
more about rats I realised the so-called expert books I had read talked
nonsense half the time - a rat wasn't happiest alone, as it said in one of
the books.  So from then on I always kept two or more.  They have all been
special to me but the odd time you can't help but have favourites.  Two rats
stand out to me - Ralphie and Oscar.  They loved humans so much and were so
very loving, never happier than when they were snuggling up to you.  Ralphie
was a shoulder rider and would sit there for hours whilst I did housework
and went in the garden - the neighbours thought he was so funny.  And he was
my fiance's drinking buddy - always rushing over to him when he had some
beer, sitting there waiting for a taste or trying to reach inside the glass
to help himself!  Oscar was just the sweetest, even the rat-dislikers/haters
amongst my family and friends loved him.  He would follow me around the flat
like a shadow, then when he was tired would jump up onto the bed and fall
asleep on my pillow.  His other favourite resting place was snuggled up to
your neck.  Rats truly are wonderful little creatures.

Tracey

By the time I got my first pair of rats, I was already a hamster, mice
and gerbil owner.  I had learned from them how very different every
small animal is.  When you're new to rodents, they all seem the same.
So, I was very interested in learning about all of the kinds of small
pets.  I thought it was so neat that they were all so different.

So, everytime I'd go into the pet store to buy supplies, I'd stop and
look at the small animal section.  And everytime I'd go in, there'd be
hairless rats.  They were so cute!  I'd overhear people passing by
their tanks, pointing at them, saying "Ewwwww, look at how ugly those
are!" and various comments like that.  It really hurt me to know those
cute little animals were thought of by so many in such a negative
way.  I kept telling my husband how cute I thought they were, and he
too, would make that "they're weird!" face.  That only made me even
more determined and I fell for them more and more as time passed.

During all of that time, too, I was spending loads of time online
researching my hamsters, mice and gerbils...and one thing I would
notice is people bragged about their rats, and rats in general.  I was
fascinated by the tidbits I would read.  Rat owners definitely seemed
to think their small pets were "the best" and it intrigued me.

Anyway, a few months later, someone was selling a pair of hairless
rats in the classifieds.  I immediately jumped at the chance to
finally become aquainted with the fascinating animals I'd been
admiring and hearing about for so long.  The former owners made
comments like, "Hopefully you won't forget to feed them like we did!"
and various other things like that - while giggling!!!  I was so sad
for the little rats which had come to me with the names 'Killer' and
'Monster'.  I paid them a ridiculous price for the two rats, but I
didn't care, I was just glad the rats were not in their care anymore.
I felt like I had saved them without even planning it.  It just seemed
very meant-to-be.

I immediately changed my girls names to 'Millie' and 'Jane' and
proceeded to spend the first evening with them out of their cage.  I
hadn't warned my husband they were coming...and when he saw them, he
sort of rolled his eyes but he is very understanding and just left it
at that.

Anyway, concerned about them, within days of their being in my care, I
had transformed into some sort of crazed research fiend.  I logged
hours and hours and hours of Google time researching my new pets.
Wow!  Did I ever learn a lot in the first few days.  Talk about a cram
session!!!  I read and read and studied like the most intense of
students.  The very first thing I realized was their small crappy cage
and seed mix had to go.

So, within the week, my husband and I erected their first home - a
cabinet-style habitat, had them on a block diet.  They were getting
free roam every day for hours...  I tell you...they must have been
like, "Oh my gosh, what is going on here, this is so cool!"  I was
lucky in that they were not skittish or biters when I got them,
despite their poor start.  They have always been gentle and always
allowed me to love them, from Day One.

They won me over so instantly...I am so glad they came into my world.
They started something...  Now, I am one of the people online bragging
about my rats, praising rats, promoting rats...  I totally understand
now.

P.S.  My husband is now a rat lover.  He goes out of his way each day
to give them little kisses, his favourite thing to do.  He baby talks
them.  It's so cute.

hahah great question! i got my first rat because one of my friends from
school convinced his mom to buy him one. i still remember his rat's name :
satana
i convinced my mom to buy me one. it was a white male which i named "mr. ee
ee" (rat squeaking sound). he was very mellow and i was a little kid so i
abused him a bit. back in those days i knew nothing about rat care so i kept
him in a tiny cage with no companion and cedar bedding. eventually i got him
a girlfriend and they had babies. that's how i got started breeding rats,
all of those years ago.
mr. ee ee was always a very happy little guy.

My family has always kept guinea-pigs - my mum has kept them all my life
and they were always around. Then, when I was very small, I decided I
wanted some mice, and ended up with three - a black self, Lucy, a black
silver fox, Jenny, and a beautiful golden satin, Mary, who unfortunately
was very overweight and lazy as hell, as goldens seem to be prone to be.
The trouble was that I couldn't separate the mice to put her on a diet -
I thought that would be unnecessarily cruel - and no matter how little
food I put in there, she would always eat just as much and the others
would get thinner. She didn't actually seem to eat that much more than
the others, she was just naturally fat. I liked to give them sunflower
seeds, as they would all remove the shell in different ways. Lucy would
carefully crack the shell all around the seam, then pull the halves apart
to release the seed. Jenny would nibble in a circle round the top, remove
the top (like you would with a soft-boiled egg), and pull out the seed.
Mary, lazy-bones, would just mash the whole thing in her teeth for a
minute then try to extract the bits of smushed-up seed from all the bits
of smashed-up shell. I also remember that Lucy and Jenny would go to the
toilet in one corner of the cage, and build a beautiful spherical nest in
the diagonally opposite corner. Big fat Mary would then waddle over,
plonk herself right on top of this beautiful construction, flattening it,
then wee and poo all over it. I swear Mary drove the other two to
distraction, but she was so beautiful she was worth it - I always thought
of her as being like one of those red-haired curvaceous Rubenesque
beauties you see in paintings :-)

Anyway, I got side-tracked. My family were keen on small animals, so we
used to go to the Fur and Feather shows in, I think, Doncaster where I
would see the show rats. The other show animals would sit regally in
their show boxes, whereas the rats would hang upside-down by all fours
begging to get their tummies tickled. They also responded more than any
of the other animals did when you went up to the show-boxes and said
hello - and there was usually somebody walking around with an eight inch
long male with a tail to match sitting on their shoulder. I still loved
my mice, of course, but from then on I wanted a rat.

A few years later, we were in a local pet shop, which was mostly an
animal supplies shop, but the shopkeeper's daughter's pet rats had
recently had babies. These babies had been handled for several hours a
day by this little girl from day one, and were incredibly tame and
inquisitive. I asked to have a look, so I opened up the cage, and
immediately a dozen baby hooded rats leapt straight on to my hand, and
one ran straight up my arm, sat on my shoulder and proceeded to groom my
ear. I fell in love with this one, and decided that now was the time to
get my rats. I wanted males, but I wanted one of them to be this baby who
had been so friendly, so I just looked around in the others till I found
one with similar looking genitals and different markings to the one I'd
already chosen. Since we'd had small animals for a long time, we already
had a suitable cage, and we grabbed some rat food, and I took them home.
My males of course turned out to be females, and though they were pet
shop rats they were generally healthy and had superb temperaments.
Stripe, the rat who'd made such an impression on me, has remained my
favourite (I know, I'm not supposed to have favourites!). One of the
things I loved about Stripe was her discerning palate - she would turn
her nose up at cheap chocolate and only ate the fancy stuff, and once
some people I knew tried to give her cheap lager, which she wouldn't
touch - they then tried giving her some real ale, and luckily I had just
come into the room, otherwise she would have wanted far more than just a
droplet off somebody's finger!

So Spot and Stripe were my introduction to owning rats, and I can't think  
of a better introduction than these two sweet-tempered, healthy rats,
whom I was so lucky to have found in a small, rural animal supplies shop.

Phew, that was a longer post than I expected it to be!

Rosemary

My husband (Neil) moved to Brisbane before I moved there, so we lived
apart for almost 2 years. During this time all our pets (cats, dog,
rabbit, mice, sheep and chickens) lived with me in Armidale. Neil
started to miss our pets, however being a bit possessive I wouldn't
let him take any of them.

Eventually Neil started admiring the rats in the pet stores, why I'm
not sure, maybe our mice had tweaked his interest in rats. One day,
whilst watching the pet store rats, one of them tried to jump out to
Neil. That night Neil told me what the rat did and I pretty much told
him that he had to adopt her ASAP. So the next day he adopted the
jumping rat, who we named Crackers and another rat, Lilly. When I went
to visit Neil in Brisbane a month later, we adopted Tigger, a
littermate of Lilly's.

During the visit I fell in love with the rats and took them home with
me. Leaving Neil pet-less once again. He soon adopted 3 more rats.
Eventually I moved to Brisbane and our rat numbers slowly grew as time
went by (currently at 14 rats)

So we are now hooked. Cracker's is our favourite and is still with us,
although she is getting on a bit in age. She is such a charmer and so
good natured. However, having said that, all our rats are wonderful.

Dewi

I had always grown up with animals around, always 'family' animals
never my own.  We never had any rodents or small animals.
When I moved out I felt as if the apartment always had an empty feel
to it, but because I was renting I was afraid to get any animal
companions and have to move out because of them.
I always liked rats, but didn't know that people actually had them as
pets.  One night I was watching a show on Discovery, one geared
towards the creepy crawlies in the world.  They concentrated mostly on
wild rats, but at the very end of the segment they showed a family
sitting on their couch in their living room and they were covered in
rats.  They went on to say how wonderful pets they made.
I researched as much as I could, I didn't have a computer or the
internet, and within a month of watching that show I purchased Simon
from the feeder bin of one of the most evil petstores in Toronto.  I
had no clue that I could adopt from shelters or rescues.
Of course I was told that you cannot have two males together, and not
knowing enough I thought that was true.  I did ok with Simon's care,
he had a very large cage and was kept on corn cob bedding and was fed
lab blocks and fresh foods.  He did receive vet care, although knowing
what I know now it was really pathetic.  I still feel guilty to this
day that he lived on his own his whole life, though.
That was almost a decade ago, and since then I have had just over 50
rats in total.

Whew!  Too many to read them all right now, but let me add mine.

My son, at the time a dark lost soul wandering down the wrong path because
of undiagnosed illness, wanted a rat for his 13th birthday.  I said no.
Rats were filthy animals and the only reason he wanted one was to set
himself apart as abnormal.  My wife saw it differently and bought him a rat
at a store that sold them only as pets.  I was furious!  But even as I began
to vent, my daughter - a straight A model student - decided she must have
one too!  I was spitting bullets!  Apparently Father doesn't have a say in
how he runs a household anymore.

So my daughter and my son let the rats play together, and guess what?
Kittens.  Obie Rat Kenobi and Pheonix were opposite sexes.  Suddenly we had
eight rats and I swore I'd be flushing them if they didn't find other homes
for the vermin.

Then something happened to me.  I don't know what.  I can't remember exactly
when.  But I guess I saw rats as they are.  Loving, caring, intelligent
individuals who bond with people.  Maybe I saw the smiles of my family when
they played.  Maybe it was just the rats themselves, but my resolve started
to crack.  My heart went out to gentle Jack who always seemed in poor
health.  His big tough brother Otis always took care of him.  When Jack died
young of heart failure, Otis and I took it hard and became extremely close.
We spent hours together every day until he passed at three years old.
That's the first time I recall crying at the passing of a rat.  It wouldn't
be the last.

My son is nearly 21 now and an honor student in college.  My daughter has
finished schooling and moved on with her career.  We've had many, many rats
since then, and I have stories to tell about most of them.  We still have
six in the house.  Candy Rat is running all over me and making it difficult
to type.  And I know that as long as I'm healthy enough to care for them, I
will always have rats in my family.

[snip]

Here's another vote to request you share the name :)

Anyway, I first met rats when I was sharing a house with several people,
one of whom incidentally I ended up marrying (one of the people, not the
rats). I thought they were pretty cute (the rats mostly), but I wasn't
interested in having any pets myself at the time.

I was also put off a bit by the heartache - around this time I once
noticed a neighbour empty their 'rubbish' out by some trees in front of
our road. I couldn't believe what I thought I'd just seen, so went to
investigate. Sure enough, they'd tipped a small tank upside down,
depositing about half a dozen rats in the leaves.

We spent the afternoon trying to catch them all & in the end I think we
managed it. Sadly one, probably the mother, was dead. Another who's
movement was all wrong had probably had a stroke; the RSPCA took her
away, for veterinary care, & subsequently had her put down.

By the end of the day, the girl in our house who already had had three
or four rats now had about seven.

This is also when I went off the RSPCA. They said they'd do something
about our neighbour - probably a student, possibly keeping rats as
feeders, since on another occasion a box of crickets found its way onto
our roof, but that's another story. A couple of days later we saw two of
the RSPCA inspectors turn up next door, rings the doorbell &
surprisingly get no answer. They went away & never came back. Great work.

A year or two later & I end up moving in with my now wife. She wants
rats as pets, having met this last bunch. Eventually I agree. We get in
touch with a breeder a friend knows & find a bit out about rat care.

I'm not the most keen, but obviously I want to make sure they're looked
after properly, so the first thing to decide, them being social animals,
is on numbers. Initially we plan on a pair of females, but after
learning about their social hierarchy this becomes three & shortly
thereafter we have Kairi, Willow & Trinity in our household. I can't
help but get attached.

A year down the line & we know we want to keep rats long term & not let
their numbers drop below two or three... and of course new intros of
youngsters are best done in pairs... so we soon end up with five :)

That was about two years ago. Since then we've had upto seven rats at a
time, now in a nice big Superpet ferret cage. At the moment we're down
to five after recent losses & having trouble finding a breeder, but
hopefully soon we'll be back to seven or maybe even eight.

Right now we have Xev (aging alpha, just had her 2nd birthday, Russian
blue with a lifelong sneeze), Maddie (her quiet sister, black dumbo -
are dumbos always quieter?), middle aged black rex Evy (who recently
lost her sister) & our youngsters, now nearly one, pew Amazon & agouti
Omega (alpha in the making).

Our past rats, Charlie (white himalayan rex, Evy's sister), champagne
Mea (who went through so much at the end), her sis Gabby (agouti overly
fond of her food), and our original agouti alpha Kairi, her sister dumbo
Willow & our only sisterless rat Trinity (our first loss at only 18
months, she was always such a subdued girl).

These are such great stories... it really shows who we are and how
wonderful we are to take on these misunderstood pets with all their bad
reputation, their illnesses, their short lifespans.
Thanks Marlo for asking... I really enjoyed reading these posts.

When I was a kid, we always had hamsters.  I guess that was just the
"natural" choice if you were going to keep small animals.  It didn't take me
long to see hamsters for the hateful, ill-tempered, nasty little beasts that
they are.  No matter how well I treated mine - and I treated them quite
well - I never owned one that didn't bite.

Then one day, my friend, whose father had just gotten orders to DC (we lived
in Los Angeles at the time), was told by his parents that he would have to
get rid of his rats, Shiner and Casper (an albino), before the move.
Luckily, my parents let me take them in, and they stayed with me for another
year or so until MY father got orders to DC.  Upon arriving there, I turned
Shiner and Casper back over to my friend, who lived only 20 minutes away.

That was back in like '86-'87.  I didn't own another rat until last year,
when it just kind of struck me that rats are the perfect small pet for young
children.  So thinking my little girl would love to have a small pet, I went
out and got Oscar, Ratticus, and Pipsqueak, and a great big cage for them to
live in.  Naturally, my little girl adores them.  And, naturally, she's
never been bitten by any of them.