Rattitude

Since I first began owning rats, I’ve loved and lost several of them. Here they are, in no particular order:

Top left is Miss Socrates. Top right is Nippy. Bottom is Deb (aka Momma)These were the first 3 of my rats I ever owned. I bought them from the pet store I used to work at.

Deb was a feeder rat who had babies. She and her litter were all destined to be snake food. I fell in love with Debs personality. She liked to play hide and seek with under her bedding, and was very gentle about her babies, and seemed to like to show them off.

Deb died of old age.

Nippy turned out to be the most loved of all of the first three girls, and maybe the most loved ever. She was one of the two I picked out to come home with me because as a little ratlet she would stand up on her back legs and tug as my fingers with her teeth when she wanted to be picked up.

She nibbled her way into not only my heart, but into my husbands as well. She would all but throw herself out of the cage when we opened it, demanding to be loved, and demanding to be loved NOW.

We made the decision to put her to sleep when a non-cancerous tumor she had began to imped on her way of life. Such a friendly rat, she even bruxed and eye boggled as the vet gave her the injection.

Some people laugh at me about it, and some people say I’m selfish for crying over a pet and not crying for the victims of such mass tragedies as 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina, people who I don’t even KNOW, but the day I put Nippy to sleep was one of the most painful days I’ve ever lived through.

When they were tiny babies, I picked out Miss Socrates because I liked her coloring. My husband named her after the white rat in the movie “Willard.” As far as rats go, she had a small personality, loving but not demanding, nothing out of the ordinary. Just your nice, normal rat. She outlived her sister, but not by long. We lost her to cancer.

Buddy was a big fella, and my only boy rat.

He also came from the pet store I used to work at. His mother was supposed to be a feeder rat, but her beauty saved her life. We kept her as one of our females we used to breed our pet rats from.

I don’t remember what it was about Buddy that made him the one my boss chose to be the one we kept to breed, but he turned out to be a fine buck. His children came out in all colors, including blazed like his mom, and rex (curly fur) and he even had double rex (semi-hairless) children!

Buddy LOVED people, he was my shoulder buddy, always content to sit on my shoulder or lay across my neck and brux.

I used him to get a lot of people to realize that rats are not all evil, disgusting, disease carrying, baby eating demons.

His only bad character was that if you stuck your finger in his cage, he would try to bite it off.

I always thought of Buddy as MY rat, and when the pet store went out of business, I happily took him home with me.

We lost Buddy suddenly on April 11, 2006. He had shown no outward signs of sickness, even up to the night before he died he was his usual self. It was a horrible shock to me that night when I went in to feed him and found him dead.

He was a pretty up there guy, so I chalked his death up to old age.

Haruko, one of Buddy’s children and the prettiest rat I’ve owned to date. She looked just like her mother (who was also her grandmother)

Rattie inbreeding to get the desired markings. Not a GOOD thing to do, but not a HORRIBLE thing to do for one generation. You just don’t want to do it over and over and over or you’ll get…surprise, surprise, genetic birth defects. She was from Buddys’ first litter, and I had claimed her before she was even born, saying that I wanted a female baby if one looked like Pretty Lady.

I called her my spasta rat and my Horrible Haruko, becuase she was a little rat ball of dynomite. Never ever content to just sit and snuggle, she had to run here and run there and sniff this and nibble that.

We lost her to cancer on January 26, 2006.

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In September of ‘08 I brought home two little rat sisters, one of them picked out because of the stripe on her face.  I have a weak spot for striped faced rats.

We named her Nibbitz.

She was a TEENIE little thing when I first broght her home, just a slight handful, and afraid of the whole world.

She did grow up to be a strapping young rat woman though.  And lived a happy life with her sister One of Two, and their catemates.

Sadly, the last week of April we lost our dear girl.  She’s got her wings now and is flying with all the dear rats I’ve known before her.