Rats

Rats are very nice pets, despite their bad reputation. They are quite intelligent, clean and "low-maintenance" ;-) Few people know that pet rats (fancy rats) are to wild rats what a German Shepard Dog is to a wolf: they look similar but are different. Pet rats are domesticated wild rats. They differ from wild rats in their appearance, but also in behaviour and physiology (e.g. some organs have slightly different sizes).

Nevertheless it's so deep in peoples' heads that rats are dirty disease spreaders, which just is completely false. And a lot of people find the naked tail disgusting.

But Regina and I love rats: they make very nice pets. They look very cute (IMHO), are intelligent (which can also be problematic ;-), are very social animals and don't require costly equipment (you can build a cage for yourself). The only real problem is that they are rodents, and rodents like to gnaw on things. But on the other hand, cats and dogs like to destroy your furniture as well ;-)

I recommend reading the Wikipedia entry for pet rats (german entry).

Here is a list of all rats that I've had:

• Toxoplasma: My first rat. I got him from a punk. I only got two photos of him, but I don't have a scanner to scan them.
• Arwen and Miriel: Our first rats in our flat (when I had Toxo I was still living at my parents house).
• Lila and Blue: We got them from the animal assylum. They were already one year old when we got them and weren't used to humans. They didn't like to get touched and bite if you tried. But this was not their fault but is due to how they rose up in the animal assylum.
• Nami, Sora and Yuri: Since rats are very social animals we decided to take three rats this time. This turned out to be a good idea and we will from now on always take at least three rats.
• Yukiko, Kazumi and Jun: A friend of ours called us one day that a friend of her mom found a young rat. That guy asked around if someone wanted to have it and of course we immediately said yes ! She was only about five weeks old (six weeks is the typical age at which you separate a rat from her mother) and because Nami was very jealous (she and her sister were already about 2 years old) we had to get two more rats in Yukiko's age so she's not alone. So for a few months we had six rats which was a busy time ;-) Unfortunately Yukiko did not recover from a cancer operation and passed away on 19. April 2008. Kazumi got cancer as well but recovered very well from her operation. But Jun got some kind of infection of inner organs and passed away on 13. July 2008.
• Aki, Kiyoko, Ylvi and Una: After Yukiko passed away we wanted to get young rats so that Kazumi or Jun would not be alone when one or the other would die. We unknowingly asked a breeder. She sent us photos of the then two weeks old rats and we chose three. But when she turned up with the rats four weeks later it turned out some where what we call "Qualzucht" in German: problem breeds or suffering breeds might be adequate translations. Ylvi is a "Rex" which means she gets curly hair. The problem is the whiskers are curled as well, and whiskers are very important organs for rats. We noticed she also had a "Dumbo" (their ears are not on top of the head but on the sides) and we thought that this poor rat would have a hard time finding a good home alone so we decided to take her as well so she is with rats she already knows/is related to (Aki and Una were sisters). Two days later Aki got sick (a cold) and even though we went to the vet the next day and tried different drugs she didn't recover and died a week later (she very quickly got severe problems with her lungs and could barely breath). The other rats got sick as well but luckily recovered. We will never take rats from a "breeder" again ! Those people do not like the animals, they like what they can do to them (breeding and watching what the results are).

See our rat gallery.