::Articles::

HOW I CAME TO BE RAT FANCIER
(And Some Important Lessons I Learned)
By: Drusilla Flowers

            It all started a couple of years ago when my dog Rogan found a wild mouse in our window well.  I caught the mouse and showed it to my son Peter, who very excitedly asked if we could keep it.  Rogan seemed to be asking the same thing as he whined and shook with a latent hunting instinct now emerging.  I said “o.k.” and bought a cute plastic habitrail cage equipped with all the tubes and gadgets.  All was well until Rogan decided to make contact with the alien life form and broke a connection in the plastic tubes.  The mouse, which was never quite happy in the plastic cage, seized his opportunity for freedom and ran!  We never saw the mouse again until I cleaned under the refrigerator months later and found its mummified remains. 
            Well that left me with an empty cage.  I remembered how I kept pet rats as a child.  This inspired me to seek a new cage occupant, to the delight of son and dog.  Sweety was her name, a little beige female rat about six weeks old.  I picked her out of a cage full of similar sized rats at a local pet store.  There were cages of other sized rats too, ranging from small, medium, large and extra large.  I knew these rats would be sold as food for snakes.  It sounded to me like ordering fast food from MacDonalds (would you like a small order of rats or would you like to super size it?)  Unfortunately, as sweet as she was, Sweety was not healthy.  My joke at the time was that we had a rat that was worth $62.95.  She cost $2.99 to buy and $60.00 to get rid of the respiratory infection that came with her!  We fell in love with our little Sweety, and I considered buying another rat.
          There is a saying amongst rat fanciers that rats are like potato chips, you can’t have just one!  Sunny was his name, my next rat from the pet store.  He was rescued from the cage labeled “large rats”.  I noticed some things were different with Sunny.  He was not as sweet and friendly as Sweety.  His head tilted in a funny way and he rolled in your hands.  Worst of all, he had lice!  I braced myself to find our what to do to help him.  It turned out that Sunny had an inner ear infection, and I was able to get rid of the lice.  I now know that Sunny was not socialized as a young rat, which explained his unfriendly behavior.  However, I was committed to taking care of him, feeling noble that I saved him from “the jaws of death”. 
            About this time in our rat adventures that I began to do web searches on the Internet.  I am not computer savvy.  I’m like the innocent babe seeing the world for the first time.  My search words “pet rats” yielded over a thousand websites!  “Oh my God!” I said to my self.  In complete amazement I found clubs, breeders, and related websites devoted to rats.  I noticed that these websites tended to have links to pet rat breeders instead of pet stores.  I learned that rats are bred, and have pedigrees like dogs.  The most astonishing thing I found is the fact that there are rat shows, just like dogs!  My reaction was that of humorous disbelief! They are just rodents, not like cats or dogs or livestock!
            Nevertheless, I grew so excited about my new discovery that I made my first contacts with rat breeders and found some nice people to mentor me.  I joined a rat club, attended shows, and obtained our first pedigreed rats.  Yes, our rat life was wonderful (Rogan thought so too)!  Best part of it all is that it was just the beginning!
            My education had begun.  I learned about breeding, genetics (rat fanciers are like amateur geneticists!), health problems and more.   Most of the websites discouraged buying rats from pet stores, which was not surprising.  My own experiences supported this advice!  Breeding and showing rats has grown into a serious hobby for me, and an occasional diversion for my son and dog.  Many wonderful rats have made my acquaintance and they are all from reputable breeders.  Healthy and well socialized; young rats bred with high standards in mind do make the best companions.  There is only one pet store that I have ever purchased a rat from since my “enlightenment” and that is Petsmart.  I have a specific reason for this.  I found a beautiful black Berkshire girl whose markings were very good.  To my surprise, the Petsmart manager asked me to sign a pet purchase agreement and health guarantee.  The manager informed me that Petsmart screens buyers and uses contracts to prevent people from mistreating a rat bought there.  That includes people who would buy a rat for use as snake food.  I was impressed with the manager’s attitude against using live rats as food for snakes!   
            Being bred in mass numbers, feeders or pet store rats are riddled with health problems and are not socialized.  The lineage of a rat is not known and it is impossible to know its genetics.  If you are looking for a pet or show rat, please find a breeder of good reputation.  I certainly wish I had known about the vast resources that are available to the rat fancier when I started out with Sweety.  Even so, our little sweet girl from the pet store did give me the desire to learn more, and for that I will always be grateful!