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to the
RATS' OWN PAGE
Yes,
you read that correctly. Rats. Not the animal which springs to
everyone's mind when looking for a pet, but having had five now,
they really do make the most WONDERFUL pets. They are inquisitive,
friendly, not inclined to bite and very intelligent, and they
DON'T smell if their cage is kept clean.
The first rats we had were two we took in while a friend of a
friend of a friend moved to another town; friend's friend's friend
never came back to collect them so we ended up with two pet rats
to add to the menagerie. Since we didn't even know their names
they were christened Templeton and Nimh (literary
references there for you!) and soon became part of the household.
Templeton was a lovely creamy colour and Nimh deep chocolate,
which was the first I knew about pet rats coming in colours other
than white. They loved watching TV perched on my son's shoulder
and helping themselves to salt-and-vinegar crisps. Sadly, a rat's
lifespan is short and as they were already adult rats when we
got them, within the year Nimh died of old age and Templeton only
outlived her by a few months.
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Guinness on her favourite perch,
Catherine's shoulder.
![](Murphy2.jpg)
Rats,
rats, rats!
(Murphy aged only a few weeks)
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![Foster](Foster_small.jpg)
Foster
![Murphy](Murphy_small.jpg)
Murphy
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We carried on with
the usual hamsters, gerbils, rabbits and guinea pigs until in
1998 Catherine won a competition to design a teeshirt. When
she attended the press photo-call to be presented with the cheque
they asked her what she was going to do with the money, and
were rather taken aback when she announced that she would spend
it on buying a rat and a suitable cage! (Not the answer
they had expected from a teenage girl!) So Guinness came
into our life. She was very tame from the start and rode around
on Catherine's shoulder once she grew too big to fit in her
shirt pocket. Sadly, after only a year she developed a chest
infection which turned to pneumonia and, despite devoted nursing,
died in September 1999. Catherine was devastated and would not
contemplate replacing her, but after a month she decided that
she really did want another rat and so went out and bought a
seven-week-old baby female rat, dark grey with white paws, which
she called Foster. The following day she bought another
baby female, champagne-coloured this time, with a darker nose
and tail, about the same age but from a different breeder, which
she called Murphy (continuing the breweries theme - Guinness
was a black-and-white hooded rat, so in her case the name was
quite appropriate.)
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Foster and Murphy
went the way of all rats - the only drawback is their short life-span,
still long enough to get really attached to them - and again we
had a gap where Catherine couldn't bear to replace them, but inevitably
their successors came into our lives. |
So - meet
Roxy (far right) and Dewey - so called because she bears a startling
resemblance to the smallest brother on Malcolm In The Middle!
They have their own website, Roxy's
Run, with lots more photos and stuff about rat-keeping in
general. |
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![](Roxy-photo.gif) |
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PONIES' PAGE
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OTHER PETS
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The rat
featured on this background set is Guinness.
You can find more matching background sets by clicking on the "Graphics
by..." button.
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