The hardest part about owning a rat is having to say good-bye after such a brief but unforgettable time - the average lifespan of pet rats is between 2-3 years. On this page, I'd like to share stories of some of my many pets who had touched my life but have now moved on. You can scroll to the bottom of the page to read them or click on a picture.

Mable was a brown agouti hooded female, she was the first to introduce me to the wonderful world of rats.  I had read many articles about how rats were becoming more common as pets because of their personalities but I never believed they would be quite as much fun as they really are. The day I brought home Mable, I was really intending to look at rabbits but I overheard one of the people working there talking about the baby rats that were going to be snake food, so I asked if I could look at them. I really had my eye on the blue hooded in the cage, but all of a sudden, the little brown hooded jumped on my hand, crawled up my arm and perched herself on my shoulder. Obviously, I told the woman that the brown one was coming home with me. After a  week, Mable learned her name and responded to it. When she was big enough to not get through small spaces, I eventually started letting her run loose. Mable would follow me all over. If I was sitting on the bed, she'd jump and then crawl her way up or she'd just crawl up my leg.  Mable truly thought she was a human and everybody who met her even said so. She never liked other rats, she was very aggressive and dominant toward them but she was always gentle with me. Her favorite habit was to lay in my hand and nibble her teeth against the skin of my fingers which I guess was an affectionate grooming process for her. She spent most of her life outside of her cage and at night she would sleep in bed with me under the covers. Mable passed on all too quickly of pneumonia when she was 1 1/2 years old. I have never had a rat like her again and I know I never will, she was one of a kind. She passed on almost 5 years ago but her memories are still very much alive.

Bayakoa who I called Baya was a beautiful chocolate rex. She was my 2nd rat whom I got from a good friend who is a 4-H club judge. Baya had an incredibly calm, laid-back personality but when she was younger, she would jump around playfully like a bronco-bull. I just knew when she was old enough, I was going to breed her...if just for her personality alone. Baya passed on of old age at 2 yrs. A. P. Indy "Indy" was a stunning powder blue. He was a sweet guy with a cobby, round body. I was out of the room when Indy fell off the top of his cage while Mable was running loose one day. When I came back into the room, Mable (who hated other rats) was running around puffed up and then I noticed Indy cowering in a corner with blood covering his whole eye. I dont know if Mable had bitten the eye or if he poked it as he fell off the cage but the incident left him with only one eye. Indy lived with his 3 brothers who were always picking on him. I finally decided that the poor guy had enough to deal with as it was, with only one eye, so I wanted to get him neutered and let him live with a female. But before I neutered him, I bred him to Baya. Indy passed on of old age at 2 yrs, 9 months. Baya and Indy gave me the perfect babies with everything I wanted and nothing I didn't want. Though I was hoping for some exciting colors, the litter of 16 were completely black but it was as if I subtracted all the good qualities of Indy and all the good qualities of Baya, mixed them together and got Kelso and Mumba.

Dustin was a very big and handsome Russian Blue with a diamond on his chest. He was always a bit on the shy side when he was younger but when he was over one year old, he suddenly became a sweetie. He was my only Russian Blue male at the time and a friend wanted him to breed 6 of her females when he was 7 months old. Well, he had 6 girls dancing around him in heat and didnt touch one of them! He was another terratorial male who had to be caged by himself but when he was 2 1/2 yrs old, I thought he'd be uninterested in breeding, especially since he wasn't even in the mood when he was younger so I put him in the girl cage. At 2 1/2 yrs old, he not only had his first litter but also his 2nd, 3rd, and 4th and became the big stud boy in his elderly age. Just after his last litter, he developed rear-end paralysis and passed on before his 3rd birthday.

Porcelina was gorgeous powder blue splitted capped daughter of Odessa and Dustin. She was one of the 9 babies of the entire litter that I kept. Porcelina was the runt of the litter and remained one of the smallest rats I ever had. She was very playful and curious and loved to roam free outside of her cage. She developed Vestibular's Syndrome and passed on at 2 years, 2 months.

Corgan was a silver black irish berkshire, the oldest of my ''big boys". When he was younger, he was very shy but as he got older he became more out-going. He was very memorable as he grew older, he was an old grump..a quiet loner who never wanted to be bothered unless you wanted to give him treats.  He quietly passed on at 2 years, 7 months.

Hennessy was beautiful neutered, jet black variegated. He was a repeat breeding of Odessa's first litter and I immediately fell in love with him as a baby. He was a little clown...very happy-go-lucky, always bouncing around and loved it when I would pretend my hand was another rat and knock him over...he'd get right back up and bounce around in a circle. He grew into a very round, chubby boy and he eventually got the nickname "Chubby Checkers" because of his size and the black and white checkered pattern on his sides. I very close to him and it was extremely hard to lose him to pneumonia when he was 1 year, 10 months.

Sable was a brown agouti hooded whom I got from a good friend, Kim,  who had taken one of Kelso and Mumba's twin brother. At the time that I got Sable, I was still grieving Mable's death. As soon as I saw Sable, who was the same coloring as Mable, I knew I had to take her home, not to mention...she crawled into the crook of my arm and stayed like that for 2 hours. Sable was actually the longest living rat I ever had living over 3 yrs old. In her old age, she lost her eyesight, hearing, hair and use of her backlegs but she still kept on and she always kept her innocent baby-face look.

I don't have pictures scanned of these 2 but I'd like to share their stories as well.

Liddy was a silver Russian Blue female that I got from a pet shop. She had beautiful coloring and was the only female of her color, so I took her right away. It wasn't until I brought her home, that I noticed she had a disability. Though she had 4 legs, she only walked on 3 of them. Her arm was twisted back...sort of the way a dislocated shoulder looks like...and she could never hold her arm straight out in front of her, always holding it close to her body. She could run in the exercise wheel and climb sides of the cages just like any other though. At the time that I got her, Bob Dole was campaigning and if anyone is familiar with him, he had a military injury to his hand and he would also hold his hand close to his body. Liddy reminded me of him so I decided to call her "Mrs. Dole." The real Mrs. Dole's first name was "Liddy"...so that's how my Liddy got her name. Though Liddy's coloring was beautiful...she was the most unattractive looking rat I ever saw. She was always thin and scrawny, had beety-eyes, small ears, a short face and her left nostril always ran plus she had a little hobble-walk like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. She was one of those that was so ugly, she was cute. She surprisingly gave birth to 4 babies 1 1/2 weeks after I had her. All her babies were beautiful and one of them, Dustin, turned out to be my big stud boy. Liddy had to be euthanized just shy of her 2nd birthday. She is one of the most memorable rats I'll ever have.

Junior was one of my original powder blues. His litter came from a female Adele, who I got from a pet shop. Adele delivered a litter of 8, all powders, all males, only 5 days after I had her. I figured the litter was probably inbred because Adele was in a cage filled with her other littermates. I think because of the inbreeding, all of these males were extremely territorial even to eachother, I kept 5 of them and all of them had to be caged separately by the time they hit 8 months old. Junior was a carbon-copy of his mother, which is how he got the "original" name of Junior. Due to his hormonal personality, he was always trying to act dominant. If I stood outside of his cage and was touching the bars, he would climb up and puff at me and start kicking the bars of the cage. It was actually quite funny. He was fine when you held him though. I bred him to Mina and kept his 2 babies, Odessa and Reno. I almost always called him "June". During the time that I had him, I loved the Smashing Pumpkins. They had a song called "Hey June." The words to the song were silly but it was catchy, so I was always walking around singing "Hey June, I'm going to the moon...." Everytime I was near Junior's cage when I sang this song, he would climb the bars of the cage, sometimes hanging off the top, just to hear me sing the song that he thought was for him. This was the best memory I had of him. I had to euthanize him at only 1 yr, 9 months when he was very sick and the vet found a massive in his growth in his belly.

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