The Rat Fan Club

“The Rat Lady’s” Rats

The number of rats I have tends to change from month to month! As of January 2012 I have 24. Most of the rats I have right now are rescues. That means I took them in when no one else wanted them, or adopted them from the humane society or a rat rescue.

On April 11, 2009 I adopted 3 girls from an irresponsible person in the Sacramento area who bought 2 girls and 3 boys from a breeder and proceeded to let them live together. She had no idea of the genetics of these rats and unfortunately the 2 litters that resulted produced 2 babies with severe megacolon that had to be euthanized, and 2 babies, a boy and a girl, who appear to be dwarfs as well as semi-hairless, although their siblings are rexes. The boy had malocclusion of his incisors so he had to have his teeth trimmed regularly. I adopted the dwarf girl, whom I named Hoppy, and one of her sisters, a Himalayan whom I named Cotton, and one of their cousins, whom I named Caramel. Hoppy was a strange little rat, sometimes hyper and sometimes very calm and in her own little world. As an adult, Hoppy was about half the size of her sister. Cotton is an outgoing dominant but cuddly girl. Caramel, who wasn’t handled as much as the other 2, was a little shy (lots of early handling from birth makes such a difference in how personable and cuddly they are) but surprisingly, it is Caramel who became my new performing rat! She performed tricks at 2 events, our Rat-stravaganza in October 2009, and a kid’s club at my church. Cotton and Hoppy didn’t have any desire to learn tricks, but Caramel is an eager performer. Sadly, I had to euthanize Hoppy on April 28, 2011 because of congestive heart failure.

On Feb. 24, 2010 I got a call from the humane society. A week earlier, animal control had picked up a stray rat in a parking lot and taken him to the shelter. They said at first he seemed friendly, but then he started biting people. I picked him up the next day. He was a half-grown Himalayan, maybe 5-6 months old, who was very touchy and puffy, so it seemed clear the reason for his aggression wasn’t so much fear as too much testosterone. Once I got him home, he would barely let me touch him. I neutered him on the 27^th and slowly his aggression went away. Then he was still shy and it took some time for him to learn to trust me. Now he is as polite as the name I gave him, Butler.

On March 29, 2010 I adopted a baby rat, maybe 8 weeks old, from a teen in Oroville because the rat had a compound fracture of his right leg. (In a compound fracture, the bone protrudes out through the skin.) I was able to surgically repair the fracture of the tibia and fibula, and Basil, as I named him, recovered beautifully. You would never know he had a broken leg except for the lump that is still there on the bone. I was able to introduce Basil to Butler. Both boys are pretty shy and don’t like to be held much, a sign they did not get early socialization. Basil never grew much and is quite small for a boy, and smaller than Butler. I don’t know if his broken leg stunted his growth or not. And although Butler is older and larger and was originally the boss, Basil soon had the upper hand. Later I added Comet to the group.

Butler (left) and Basil.

On July 19, 2010, RATS board member Lee Standlee emailed me a Craig’s List posting from someone who bought a hairless rat at a pet shop who turned out to be pregnant and had eleven babies. The mother rat then died when the babies were twelve days old, so they were partially hand-raised. I figured they would be especially well socialized, and might make good performing rats, and since I needed new performers, I contacted her and told her I was interested in adopting two of them. She was about a 1½-hour drive north, but it just so happened Larry had been asked to drive to Yreka, three hours north, for a church meeting, so we could pick the rats up on the way back. Talk about God’s perfect timing! I knew member Carla Humbert had just lost a rat, and likes hairless rats, so I asked her if she might want two hairless boys, and she did. On August 1 when we arrived at the home to get the babies, there were five boys left, and I couldn’t stand to leave one behind, so I took all of them, and decided to keep three. They were almost seven weeks old, and had a very short coat of fuzz, so I could see they were black hooded rats. Because they all had a different number of spots on their backs, I started called them Zero, One, Two, Three and Four. I decided to keep One, Two and Three, because they seemed to bond to me the best, and Carla picked up Zero and Four on August 9.

I decided to keep calling them One, Two and Three, as they had already learned that as their names. One is the most cuddly and kissy, and the most active. He loves doing the athletic tricks, such as jumping, the tightrope and balancing on a barrel. Two loves raspberries on his belly (I call them belly buzzes!) and quickly learned to pull up a basket on a string and to pull a string to ring a bell. Three is more shy and is not as interested in doing the tricks, although he has learned a few just by watching One and Two do their tricks, and seems very smart. Maybe too smart! One does pretty good performing in public. Two is more shy and needs a quiet audience and a little time to get used to the situation before he will do his tricks in public.

One, Two and Three at 11 weeks

On November 10, 2010 I got a call from Carrie, a local rat owner who was going through a nasty divorce. Her husband was fighting for custody of their kids, and got Child Protective Services involved, who demanded that Carrie reduce the number of her rat cages from 3 down to 2. Carrie works for a local couple who breed both reptiles and rats, and of course most of the rats go for reptile food, so Carrie adopts the special ones. She had 16 rats, and she asked if I could help her to find a home for one of her most recent adoptions, an 8-week-old pink hairless boy with pink eyes. I told her I would adopt him, which pleased her of course. I figured I could introduce the boy to my other 3 hairless boys. My friend Marg, who is an animal communicator, talked to him, to find out what name he would like, and he picked the name Sambo. Marg explained to him that Sambo was not a politically correct name, but he didn’t care, that’s what he really wanted. I thought it was hilarious! I decided his full name is Little Pink Sambo. It took a little bit to persuade the hairless boys to accept Sambo. It helped that I took them all with me to visit my friend Barbara in Sacramento, as they were more willing to accept him on new territory. By the time we returned home he was living with them, and they continued to accept him once we got home. Sambo was a little shy at first, but as he got older, he started to get aggressive. I neutered him in December, and now that he is 8 months old he is more laid back and friendly.

Sambo as a baby (before being neutered.)

On Dec. 14, 2010, I adopted 3 new boys from a student who was going to try to run a rat rescue, but who discovered it was bit more than she expected. One of the boys, an adult albino, was alone, and the other 2 boys, both black hooded and probably brothers, were together. The last 4 inches of the albino’s tail had been degloved (stripped of its skin) and was in the middle stage of healing where the end of his tail was black and dried up. I wanted to take a picture of it, but he was so scared when he arrived I decided to wait until he was feeling more secure. It took him a few weeks to feel comfortable with me, and most of the dead part of his tail fell off before I got around to taking pictures. I have been able to take some pictures showing the later stages of the healing process. See the First Aid page here.

The black hooded boys both had severe cases of mange mites on their ears, and one even had a large lesion on his nose. I had never seen anything like this before. I’m pretty sure that these boys had been purchased at a local pet shop which had sold several rats with mange mites between March and June of 2010, so they probably had the mites for 6-9 months. To see pictures of Prancer’s mange lesions, see the page on Skin Problems here. Fortunately, treatment with moxidectin quickly cleared up their lesions, and now the only sign that they had the mites is that the edges of their ears are a little jagged.

I named the albino Comet, and the hooded brothers Prancer and Blitzen. Blitzen was quite aggressive with Prancer so I neutered him. Comet was also aggressive, so I neutered him. After 8 weeks I started trying to introduce the 3 of them, but it didn’t go so well. Prancer wasn’t the least bit aggressive, but he kept jumping on Comet trying to hump him! It was strange, because he never did that to Blitzen. As you might imagine, Comet didn’t like this much, and I’m sure he thought Prancer was trying to attack him. Rather than neuter Prancer, I decided to see if I could instead introduce Comet to Basil’s group. That went much better, and I was able to move Comet in with them. A few weeks, later, Prancer started getting a little aggressive, so I ended up neutering him after all. All 3 of these boys are poorly socialized and prefer not to be held or petted.

Comet (his eye is abnormally pale from the camera flash)

Front view, Blitzen (left) and Prancer Back view, Prancer (left) and Blitzen

On April 30, 2011 I adopted 9 rats from Northstar Rescue, the group that rescued over 1000 rats from the hoarder in southern California who appeared on the TV show Hoarders. I had offered to take the least adoptable rats they had, and they gave me 5 aggressive boys, one boy missing an eye, 2 girls each missing a foot, and one girl with an injury that had created a tear near her anus, through which she would poop. None of the rats were well socialized, and even after months of adjustment, most of them still strongly object to being touched, let alone picked up. Some of them have bitten me. It has been difficult to get photos of them.

I named the one-eyed boy Rooster (from the movie True Grit), and the other boys Wilson, Cecil, Corbin, Bernie and Woody, and the girls Hope, Faith, and Grace. Unfortunately, by October 9 Hope, Faith, Corbin, and Woody had all died from various health problems. I then adopted another hoarder rescue boy from Northstar, already named Willy, and after he was neutered introduced him to Grace, who was alone. Rooster and Bernie live together, and Wilson and Cecil live with 3 other rescue boys. (See photo below.) Wilson was probably only about 6 months old when I adopted him, and he is the only one of this rescue group who will let me pet him and doesn’t mind being picked up too much.

On July 9, 2011 I adopted 2 baby boys from a Chico family. The parents are divorced and when the dad bought 2 baby rats to feed to his snake, his young daughters protested and wanted to keep them as pets, so they went to live at the mom’s house. However, no one noticed one rat was a boy and one a girl, so 7 weeks later they needed homes for 12 babies. One of the 2 boys I adopted is an agouti Berkshire, whom they called Bat because he liked to climb upside-down. I liked that name and decided his full name was Bat Masterson, so I named his brother, who is a black self (all black), Wyatt Earp. Bat is the most outgoing and friendly and very licky, while Wyatt plays a bit rough. I was hoping they might be interested in doing tricks, and so far Bat shows some interest.

Bat (left) and Wyatt

On August 7, 2011 I adopted 2 boys from my friend Barbara in Sacramento. She had adopted a female who was pregnant and so needed to find homes for the babies. One was a black bareback, whom I named Virgil Earp. The other is a black hooded with just a few little spots on his back, and I named him Doc Holliday. Virgil is a very licky, friendly in-your-face rat, while Doc is a little less so. It was no problem putting Virgil and Doc in with Bat and Wyatt, although I eventually had to neuter Virgil and Doc, and they still live together.

Doc (left) and Virgil

On my next trip down to Sacramento, on Sept 4, I adopted another male rat from Barbara who was a relative of Cotton and Caramel. The woman who allowed them to be born was still letting her rats breed willy nilly. This rat was a mocha rex who was extremely aggressive. If your hand was anywhere in reach of his cage, he would bite you. Obviously he couldn’t be adopted out to anyone else, so I took him home to neuter him. Because his rex fur reminded me of feathers, and he seemed to want to be the boss, I named him Chief. It took the full 8 weeks after his neuter for his aggression to go away, and I was finally able to introduce him to Wilson and Cecil, and now he is happy to let Wilson be the boss.

Cecil (top), Chief and Wilson (right). Ironically, although Wilson is the most friendly with people, he was the most shy for the camera.

On my next visit to Sacramento on Nov. 7, I ended up adopting 2 more rats from Barbara, both relatives of Chief. One of the boys has strange behavior. Whenever he moves around he throws his head up and down repetitively. Other rats had trouble relating to him because his behavior was so abnormal, but he was very sweet. The other was a younger baby whom Barbara wanted me to adopt because he was so friendly. I named the spastic rat Syd, after the social misfit sloth in the movie Ice Age. The second night I had the new baby boy on the couch with me, I was reading the comic page in the newspaper and he leaped into the center of the paper! I was impressed with his daredevil bravery and went online the next day to research names in the Flying Wallenda family, and picked the name Tino for him. I was soon able to introduce Syd and Tino to Wilson’s group, although Wilson still doesn’t understand Syd’s attempt to play with him and often puffs his fur up and squeaks at him, but this doesn’t seem to faze Syd, and Wilson never actually attacks Syd.

Syd and Tino

Memorials

Click here to see pictures of some of my rats who have passed on.

Rat Fan Club
857 Lindo Lane
Chico, CA 95973
(530) 899-0605 ratlady@ratfanclub.org