I've been told I'll be suspended if I make any more journals expressing myself.

So expect to hear nothing more from me until this shit blows over.
Pathetic to the max.

Picard now has a folder on my facebook to log his weight gain:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/.....p;l=fe79dc3207

I will be putting a new pic of him up every single day until he is a good normal weight. If you're interested in his progress, check back often!

So, who would have thought that me putting up one picture of my new rescue rat would result in such drama?

Even when Im not being inflammatory, just stating the facts of how that little boy (Picard) came to be with me, people still wanna get their drama quota.
Im sorry, I didn't make any of that up, he DID come from a snake owner who fed live, he IS malnourished and too young to be away from mum, and several of his litter mates HAVE already gone to their deaths.
And when I look at him, and the other boy I rescued, Q, I feel sick to my stomach that people would willingly abuse and kill such innocent, trusting, baby animals.

Im often asked by my real life friends why I don't just block the people who bitch at me.
I WILL always block trolls. If I think someone is only there to very obviously cause drama, I will block.
But for those who are trying to debate, or give an opinion, even if its fiercely against my own, I let them talk.

I will tell you why: sunlight is the best disinfectant.
I believe people should be allowed to speak, and if they're morons, they'll prove themselves to be so publically, by their own words.
Censoring them protects them from themselves, and I have no interest in doing that.
I want them to show the whole world what morons they are, and they can only do that if allowed to speak.

I believe fools should be shown to be fools. Blocking won't achieve that.

People may find this hard to believe, but I have friends who own snakes, friends I respect.
However, none of these people feed live.
I can respect snake owners who choose humanely killed frozen rats. I do not agree with any killing of rats, but I accept that frozen pre-killed is the lesser of two evils. I also know that people aren't going to stop keeping snakes any time soon, so one must be realistic.

As a example of when this thinking comes into play elsewhere, if someone is a vegan, they will be opposed to all killing of animals for human consumption.
But they also have to realise that people aren't going to stop using animals for food any time soon, so the best option is for people to support humane, free range, organic, local produce.
The vegan may feel in their heart that ALL killing is wrong, but in order to be realistic, they should not scream and rant and rage at those who are supporting the more human option.
If someone is not going to stop eating meat, or keeping snakes, then it is far better that they take the more humane route.

And that is how I see feeding snakes.
In my heart, I cannot be at all comfortable with any rat being killed for anything other than its own benefit.
So to say I support any killing of rats as snake food would be wrong. But I do fully acknowledge that if it must be done, there is a right way and a wrong way.

Put simply, if you live feed, PLEASE just fuck off. I have no interest in talking to you. I don't care what you think, I don't care what you think of me, and us trying to engage with one another is utterly pointless.
I am no more going to accept a live feeder as a friend than a parent would accept a pedophile as a friend.
I don't care if, in all other ways, you're the nicest person on earth. I don't care if we would otherwise have loads in common: your actions make you nausiating to me, and thats that.

A dog lover will not accept a dog fighter or puppy farmer as a friend.
A cat lover won't accept someone who ties cats into bags and throws them in rivers.
And nor should they be expected to. Do not expect me to entertain those I find disgusting and morally backward.

So be aware, I can be friends with those who feed humanely source frozen and pre-killed from rats that are well cared for during their lives and killed humanely. I may not agree, but I can acknowledge the situation and call those people friends in some situations.
I cannot, and will not, call a live feeder a friend.
I don't even want to refer to them as human.

I don't know how much clearer I can make this. I have tried so much over the years to AVOID drama by just asking these people to leave me alone.
Yet still they come.

Look at the submission of Picard: it was fine until a live feeder came along.
If you 'people' woud just leave me be, this situation would not arise.

As for the babies, they're doing good today.
Q is extremely active and seems to be a bit of a live wire. Picard is more sedate today, so Im a little more worried about him. I will be making them scrambled egg tonight, and spending some bonding time with them.
I am hoping they make it, and that they grow up without too many problems caused by their bad start.

The photos from the snake food rescue.
I took on two boys:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/.....p;l=60cc6181cd

I can't really say much more. This shit drains me. I look at them and just see their siblings who didn't make it :(
These lads, particularly the hairless boy, are extremely fragile and under-weight. Holding them is like holding a baby bird. You can feel every bone.
Im constantly worried about them, its like having a newborn.

I've made them some brown rice booster and they're at least eating well.
But Im still worried about them making it. They're bright and seem otherwise healthy, but I've never had rats this small here before, or this fragile and delicate.

I don't care what someone thinks about feeding rats to snakes: there is NO excuse to keep said rats in this condition. If you aren't prepared to educate yourself on how to keep baby rats fat and healthy, you have no business keeping rats, either for pets or snake food.
It is possible to raise rats for snake food and keep them well fed and well looked after.
This is NOT an example of that.

Im going to bed. Sick of this shit. I'll be fine tomorrow.

In the past, I've faced a lot of hatred and controversy for my stance against large snake ownership and live feeding.
In the past, I recieved a whole fuck-ton of abuse, trolling, flaming and hatred for my opinions.

I stand by my views. No matter how much hatred and ignorance I had spewed at me, it was water off a duck's back. I don't give a shit what people think about me, particularly those who kill rats, and I wouldn't have said it unless it was something I genuinely felt.

But that aside, people still don't seem to get WHY I have this extreme hatred for the idea of large snakes as pets, or those who use rats to sustain them.

So let me make it clear for everyone and tell you about my up-coming week. Then you tell me that I have no right to be pissed.

I recieved a call a few days ago from someone asking if I can squeeze in some rats. She was going to take 35 rats off a feeder breeder and was asking every rat rescue in the country to help out and take a few.
I agreed to take a couple of boys. They'll be arriving this week.

The lady went to pick up the rats a few days ago. By the time she got there, they'd gone from 35 to 21. Some had already gone to their deaths, in that short time.

The 'person', and I use that term very loosely, who bred them would not let the rescuer go to his house. He arranged to meet her at a petrol station.
Pretty telling, and he was probably concerned about her seeing the conditions these rats probably live in. Or reporting him for having 32 dangerous animals in his house.

He was under the impression that the rescuer wanted the rats for food too. He told her had 32 pythons, and had simply over bred the rats and now had more than he needed. He claimed he didn't normally sell/give rats to third parties but needed rid of these ones.
He also offered the rescuer 'I can breed some more for you any time you want.'

She took them home, I saw pictures.
The feeder breeder claimed the youngest was 6 weeks.
He is wrong. They range from as young as 3-4 weeks, too young to even be away from mum in some cases.
The vast majority are hairless.
They are disgustingly malnourished. One photo alone shows a little girl with a pot belly and her bones showing.
They're all so small they cannot be housed in normal rat cages because they would get through the bars; they have to be kept in hamster or mouse cages until they're older.

It is truely disgusting.

Live feeding is illegal in the UK, but this man was selling these rats live, as snake food.

So clearly he was either fully expecting people to feed them live, and just didn't give a shit, or he was expecting the buyers to kill the rats theselves. And how, exactly, are they going to do that?
How does one humanely kill a rat themselves at home?
Quite frankly, you can't.
The only way to humanely kill a rat is at a vet with a sedative injection, then a final 'killing' jab once the rat is asleep and can't feel it.

I dread to think what has happened to the others from this rescue that weren't lucky enough to make it.

And THIS is one of the reasons I fucking hate the whole 'snake owning' thing.
As a direct result of someone wanting this species as a pet, thousands of rats suffer and die.
Snakes eat rats in the wild, sure, fine. I can live with that. But when we bring animals like this into hour homes as pets, this disgusting 'concentration camp' style world of breeding rats pops up alongside it.
And I, and rescuers like me, am usually the ones cleaning up their shit when it goes 'wrong'.
Or even when it doesn't.

Wanna know what other shit I put up with because of snake owners? Here:

1. Rats coming to me that were originally intended as snake food so have been bred without any concern for their future health, because the 'breeder' doesn't plan for them to live to adult-hood, so it doesn't matter if they carry awful health problems.
Every snake-food rescue rat I've had here has suffered health issues long before their time. Two of them, Chase and Mortemain, came with horrendous abscesses that took over their entire bodies. If you wanna see the pics I took when they were ill, see below, but not while you're eating (and believe it or not, this was NOT the worst point for both of them, these photos were taken after treatment had begun):


https://www.facebook.com/media/set/.....mp;l=669e0c8fe


I treated these with 3 different types of antibiotics, hibiscrub washes 2-3 times a day, topical antirobe, purple spray, manuka honey, co-enzyme Q10 tablets for their immune systems, they were de-mited, treated for ring-worm, the list goes on. Over the 5 weeks or so that they were like this, we tried every single treatment possible, and they were back and forth to the vet weekly.
At one point, they were nearly put to sleep because the abscesses just would NOT go, despite everything we did.
One would begin to heal, then another would appear the next day somewhere else.
The infection ate through Mortemain's foot, and destroyed the bones in his toes, and the end of his tail. He also had an abscess on the joint of his elbow which was so big and deep, it messed up the bones here and he walked with a limp for months after. He still doesn't use that leg properly.

Both these boys are healed now, and have no more abscesses.
But it took months of treatment, many times a day, before this occured. Mortemain, the worst affected, still has scars and bald patches and, obviously, no tail or toe bones.
They both occasionally get the odd abscess pop up but they seem to run their course and disappear normally now.

I can only assume they had some kind of awful immune system deficiency that meant they couldn't heal. But now they're on a good diet, treated properly and cared for, this issue has resolved.

I get 'ex snake food' rats in fairly regularly, and all of them to date have been in awful condition. And I pay out of my own pocket to correct the problems these pathetic humans have caused.
Got a reason to be pissed yet?

2. Rats that have gotten as far as to be actually dumped in with a snake but not taken. These rats are often traumatised for life and are never the same again.
If someone locked you in a small room with a lion and left you there to be eaten, would you come out of the experience well adjusted?
Once again, its rescuers like me that pick up the pieces.
A rescuer friend of mine had such a rat, and it would just sit in the corner of its cage screaming in terror.....all the time. It had been totally ruined by the experience. Just because some guy with a small penis wanted to keep a big dangerous animal as a pet to compensate.
Have I got a right to be pissed yet?

3. The thousands of rats every single year who are crammed into 'breeding racks' where they have no room to run, climb, play or do anything other than sit there and wait for their deaths.
If you've never seen a typical rodent breeding rack, here:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=e.....&bih=785&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi


Is this any way to keep ANY animal? Particularly one who is active and likes to run and climb, and has the intelligence of a toddler?
How about now? Am I allowed to hate the whole business now?

4. Trying to rehome a pet rat in a world populated with scummy snake owners. I can't even remember how many times I personally, or friends of mine, have had snake owners try to get free rats off them for food. Sometimes they up-front admit thats what they want them for, sometimes they lie to try and obtain them and claim they're a normal pet owner.
Snake owners make my life 100% more difficult when it comes to re-homing my rescues.
I have to assume that everyone who contacts me to show interest in a rat is a snake owner, until they can prove otherwise.
And I hate it. Because finding homes for rats is hard enough, without having to constantly worry that the people are snake owners.
I used to include in my ads that I would not rehome rats to snake owners, even if they just wanted the rats as pets, genuinely, I would not home to anyone who had a large snake.
Why? Because large snake owners contribute to the death of rats. I don't care if its not MY rat you're feeding to your snake, the very fact that you can feed ANY rat to a snake shows that you do not view rats in the way I need people to view them in order to have one of my babies.
The only people who stand a chance of getting a rescue rat off me are people who respect and love rats, and those who feed them to snakes don't respect them, and certainly don't LOVE the rat species.
And you can whine as much as you want about the policy, but guess what? Its MY rescue. I run it myself, out of my own pocket. Im the one suffering the heart ache, financial burden and physical work that goes into it, so its up to ME what I dictate on my rehoming ads.


However, I've since taken that off my ads because, sick as it is, this was serving as a challenge for snake owners to see if they could manage to get a rat off me by lying.
It only because Im not stupid, and they usually are, that I saw through it.
Me putting 'not to be homed to owners of large snakes' was like a red flag to them to see if they could 'piss me off' by getting my rats off me.
I still hold that rule, but I only mention it once someone enquires.

Do I have a right to be pissed now?


5. The thouands or possibly millions of rats who meet their end at the hands of pathetic snake owners. How about the rats that, despite the UKs laws, are fed live anyway? Then there are those that are purchased live, but killed by the buyer at home.
How do they routinely do it?
They either put the rat into the freezer where it slowly freezes to death, put it in a bag and smack it against a table edge or something hard to break its neck (or some other method or cervical dislocation), or put it in a home made co2 tank which, if done incorrectly, as most do, is a horrific death for an animal.

People will tell you these methods are 'humane', particularly freezing to death. People like to pretend that rat just goes into a deep sleep and doesn't feel anything.
Ok.....shall we test this? The next time its below zero outside with frost on the ground, go and stand outside at night without your clothes on.
See how long you can remain out there before you begin to feel pain and discomfort and want nothing but to come back in the warm.
Tell me that is humane.

6. The attitude of snake owners. The ones who feel they HAVE to chip in when you're talking about your much loved pets with 'I'd love to feed that to my snake!' I honestly hear it at least once a week, either in the vet's waiting room, at work (we have a snake owner there) or online.
What kind of brain malfunction do you have to have to leave such a comment about someone's beloved pet? What goes through their minds?
I used to just ignore them, but it didn't seem to stop them. Now, anyone who dares spew that abusive shit at me gets a mouthful themselves. And fortunately, it isn't hard to outwit or humiliate these 'people'.

Now, if it were dogs or cats that were routinely dying in these ways, or being treated in the way rats are treated, you would see journals regularly with people expressing their disgust.
How many times do you see people going on about puppy farming or dog fighting, or any kind of animal abuse story that hits the news that features a dog or cat?

And no-one says anything against them. In fact, they have journals full of replies agreeing with them.
I mention how pissed off I am at the entire culture of keeping big snakes and the torture of rats that goes along with it, and Im viewed as crazy or, my personal favourite, a 'psycho'.
Its only crazy to oppose animal abuse against a species that isn't popular, folks.
If its a species that the public likes, like a kitten or a puppy or a nice little horsey, well, its totally rational to be angry at their abuse.

But rats? You're just a psycho if you care about them.

Imagine that all I've told you above happened to dogs and cats every day.
How would you feel? Imagine if those animals were then ending up dumped on YOUR doorstep when the abusers no longer wanted them around.
How would you feel then?
Imagine if you had to spend the majority of your low weekly wage to correct the abuse these low-lifes had done to them.
What if someone took 21 3 week old puppies off someone who was going to use them as snake food, and now we have to find 21 rescue spaces available in a country where rescue spaces are limited.

Im just saying to my haters, put yourself in my shoes.
Why SHOULD I be in love with the idea of snake owning when THIS is what comes along with it?
Tell me why, please.
I do not expect a dog owner to be happy with puppy farmers, or those who run dog fighting rings.
So why should I, as a rat lover, have to be happy with those who abuse MY favourite animal?
Live my life for a month. Get up every morning not knowing what you're going to find on your door-step when you go outside, or what you're going to get a phone call about, or how many hundreds of miles you're going to have to drive that week to go and save rats, or how much money you are going to have to spend on vet's bills that week, or even what you're going to eat that night because its either spend money on stuff the rats need, or spend it on something for your dinner.
Spend your every day up to your elbows in shit, cleaning out.

Quite frankly, I don't, I will not, and I physically CAN'T be 'ok' with the whole business of keeping reptiles that eat rats.
My life would be SO much easier, my rescue far less full and my pockets far more bulging with notes if all large snake owners just died in a fire.

Since Hoffman and Manhattan died, in only those short days, I received two separate calls to take on rats. Both were lone rats, always been alone, and both were located in the same city and called completely independently of one another!
I agreed to take them both, as I had space now :/

I collected them both tonight.

The first boy is now Shadowrat 'Make A Real Killing' aka Mark. A tiny nod to my much missed Hoffman.
He was a teenager's pet, and she'd just lost interest. He was alone in a barren cage without toys, and must have been bored rigid. He threw himself at the bars when we went into the room, desperate for something to do and some attention. He'd not been cleaned in over 2 weeks, and the girl's boyfriend was the only one topping up his water.
The mum was the one who called me. Never saw the girl. Once again, mum wasn't a bad person, and she did the right thing by taking control and finding him a new home. Its just ignorance again, not malice.
Though she did admit that the pet shop told them not to get just a lone rat, but they did anyway :/

But he's handleable, in reasonably good condition, just needs de-miting and some good nutrition. And some friends!

But second comes Doodlebug.
Doodlebug was the result of a relationship break down and the girl couldn't take the rat to her new accommodation. Like Mark, he has always been alone, and shows the typical neurotic behaviour associated with it. He is very hard to handle, very nervous, and even the owner had a really hard time getting hold of him, and told me he had bitten and drawn blood in the past. She eventually grabbed him in a towel and put him in my carrier.
She fed him mainly peanuts. She herself, once again, wasn't a bad person, she was extremely nice and clearly loved him; she just didn't know how to care for him.
But behaviour problems aside, he is physically unusual.
As you will see in the pics below, he has an extremely short face. Rats muzzles do vary in length a little, and some rats have shorter faces (usually called 'hamster faced' in the rat community, and not really desirable) but this lad is extreme.
In fact, the previous owner said the vet had actually suspected he had downs syndrome!
He also has strange eyes, they are wonky and one is different to the other. As well as this, he has a shorter tail than most rats, and he cannot close his mouth properly; its like his tongue is too big.
His eyes are constantly weepy for no apparent reason, backing up the theory that he has some kind of deformity which is maybe causing his eyes problems.

I am aware that in the pics, he looks like he has hydrocephalus, and Im not ruling it out (Jon is a medic, and he said he's fairly sure thats what Doodle has) But his bulging head isn't actually that pronounced in real life, I didn't even notice it until I looked at the photos.
But the photos also don't do justice to just how short his face is. He really does look like a hamster.

Well, here they both are. Decide for yourself on Doodle, I'll probably pop him along to the vet next week to be checked out.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/.....p;l=611f5fc418

whatever the outcome, they both have a safe home here now, and will both eventually get some rat friends, but Im taking that slowly as rats that have always been alone can be difficult to introduce.

After my last post about my rat, Hoffman, I was moved to write an article about the subject of rat castration as this is something I get asked about a lot, and something many rat owners don't realise is even possible, let alone the benefits it can bring.
It can literally change a rats life.

A lot of people wouldn't consider castration for a small animal like a rat, whereas we routinely do it to our dogs and cats without a second thought.
But whereas these ops in dogs and cats are done primarily for population control, and maybe to prevent certain medical conditions, in rats it is primarily done to curb unwanted behaviours.

Some people may say 'but if you're a loving owner, you should work through these behaviours without putting your rat through an operation!' And indeed, some people who are ignorant to the subject may well think it is as black and white as this, and that owners who do it do it primarily for their own benefit in not wanting to bother with a nasty rat.

I will state now: this is not the case.
Castration in rats to curb behavioural problems is done COMPLETELY for the benefit of the rat.
The two main reasons a rat will be castrated, behaviourally speaking, is for either aggression toward humans, or aggression toward other rats, with the latter being most common.
Male rats have an inbuilt desire to be high up in the group social structure. The higher males get the best food, their pick of the women, and the best sleeping places. Why wouldn't an animal want that? Particularly when you understand that domestic rats still retain the instincts of their wild counterparts, and in the wild, having more food and better, warmer sleeping spots, and the most robust, healthy ladies to mate with is a definate plus and means you are more likely to survive.
Perhaps it isn't so much of an issue for a domestic rat who has all the food it wants anyway, and probably won't ever see a female rat, and has a whole range of comfy sleeping places.
But they don't know that; they're just acting on instinct.

So, male rats get a surge of hormones in their first year, which can occur any time from 4 months to a year, but usually happens around 8 months.

In some males, this is only minor, and doesn't cause too much trouble. In some males, it doesn't seem to happen at all, and they remain calm and lovely for their entire life.
But in some, it turns them into monsters.
While rats rarely bite humans, hormones can change this, and Im always extremely careful handling any overly hormonal rat, because you cant generally predict their behaviour; they may not always intend to bite you, but they get so pumped up they can occasionally just go for anything within range.

While in a well adjusted rat/owner relationship, the rat will see you as the alpha and the boss and not try to challenge you (as it should be), an overly hormonal rat will see himself as the alpha out of the two of you, and you as one of his underlings who needs to be put in your place.

Some hormonal rats only direct their aggression at other rats, not their owners. I've only had a couple of hormonal boys who got pissy with me, because Im generally a pretty strong alpha figure with rats and won't tolerate it. But aggression toward their cage mates is the more common problem.
What rats don't realise is that overly-aggressive behaviour is not necessary, or even desired, for a rat to be alpha.
Rats respect those who can dominate them without hurting them, and indeed, all my most successful and longest reigning alphas have been the strong, silent types who rarely, if ever, wound and only step in when necessary.
Bullies don't make good alphas, but strong, calm, controlled rats do.
Unfortunately, when a rat is overly hormonal, they become blinded with obsessive rage about being in control, and lose sight of reality.
I've heard it compared to a woman with the worst PMS imaginable!

And Im not talking about just having the odd little scuffle now and then, or a few nipped toes; a rat who is fighting to be the boss and is obsessive about it can seriously injure another rat in his detirmination.
They may even kill, though this is rare.
Some hormonal rats may not ever actually physically harm a cage-mate, but they cause problems in other ways, such as 'herding'. This is as much of a problem as violent fighting.
This rat will actually herd the others into specific locations and not allow them to move from here. It may be an igloo or a hammock, but he'll keep watch and as soon as one of the others tries to come down for some food, you'll see him chase them back in again.
You'll tend to know if you have this kind of problem, since you'll see every other rat you own huddled in one location, while the trouble maker stamps about on his own throughout the rest of the cage.

Sometimes, rats grow out of this. But not always, and even if they do, it can take many months for the hormones to settle down, by which point, you've risked it becoming a learned behaviour. So then, even if the hormones that intially caused it disappear, the rat will continue acting this way because it has become normal for him (remember, a few months to us is a good chunk of life for a rat and is equvilant to some YEARS of this behaviour)
And many months of this behaviour is not fair on the other rats in the group.

But also, it isn't fair to the trouble maker.
If a rat is spending its every waking moment obsessing over being in control and letting everyone know it, they do not relax. They do not enjoy life. They are spending their life in a constant state of stress.
And as they cannot live safely with other rats, they often end up being kept alone due to the owner believing there is no other option.
You see it all the time: my rat can't live with other rats!

Well, being alone is NO life for a rat. Its horrendous for them.
Its like keeping a human in solitary confinement for life, and for a rat that is already stressed, it adds even more stress to their life.

Even if you remove a rat from the group and keep him alone, it does NOT solve the hormonal problem in many cases; the rat will still behave the same way, he'll still be stressed out, he'll still be madly scent marking everything, he'll still be constantly stressed that he has to prove himself, even if there are no other rats around.
And a lone rat pumped with hormones is just a miserable rat.

So, castration is the solution for these issues.
As you can see, it is NOT about human convinience, it is about the mental wellbeing of the rat. They don't LIKE feeling that way, they just can't help it.
Castration removes the hormones that cause this behaviour and allow the rat to return to normal.

Be aware that the hormones can take 6 weeks or more to disappear, so it isn't an instant fix. In some rats, I've seen them improve within 2 weeks, in others, its taken some months, but all have eventually been able to live harmoniously with other rats once more.
In some rare cases, if the rat has been hormonal for a long time and kind of learned to be this way, castration helps but they still sometimes have problems with other males. Not as severe as before, but they have kind of learned to be opposed to them.
For rats like this, putting them in with females inevitably sorts the problem out and is much simpler.
Be warned though, a rat can still produce offspring for a period of time after castration. The general rule is to wait 2 weeks after the op before introducing to girls.
Some people have made the mistake of putting a freshly castrated boy right in with girls, then wondered why babies appeared a few weeks later!

The op itself varies in cost from vet to vet.
I've seen it as low as £45 to as high as £120.
Try and find a vet who has done a rat castrate before, as it is not the same as doing a dog or cat. Rats have an open inguinal canal which needs to be understood by the vet.

As with any op, there is always a risk. Small animals are at higher risk from anaesthetic complications than bigger animals like dogs and cats.
However, I've had many boys castrated, and never had any die as a result of the op. They have all pulled through fine.
In an otherwise healthy rat, the risk is small.
There is a small risk of post-surgical complications, like the incision site abscessing, or the rat pulling its sutures out. But these generally are not huge issues, and I've dealt with them both.
If the rat pulls its sutures out on the first day, its worth taking him back to the vet for evaluation. It may be the vet opts to keep the wound open (as he did with my boy, Mandylor) or he may decide to re-glue/re-stitch.
An abscess will either usually disappear on its own, or with antibiotics.

Some rats obsess over the wound site and will not leave it alone, others don't seem to even notice.
I have noticed that in rats that have skin glue used, they will tend to bother the wound more because the glue tightens as it dries on their skin, so it pulls and feels uncomfortable.
But rats with sutures, in my experience, don't tend to have as many issues pulling the wound open.

If you rat is persistant about bothering the wound, you can make a body-brace for them.
Forget collars (elizabethan collars/buster collars/lamp shade collars, whatever you want to call them) they are hopeless on rats, and cruel.
Rats need to get their paws up to their mouth to feed, and to groom, and these collars prevent this, which distresses them no end.
A body brace, however, is a roll of tight bandage that you put around the middle of the rat, behind his front legs and around his middle. This prevents him being able to bend in the middle, so he can't actually get his nose or mouth down to the wound to pick at it.
I've had mixed results with these; they worked amazingly on Grout and Hoffman, but succeeded only in sliding off Mandylor.
The trick is getting the bandage tight enough to stay on and restrict movement, but loose enough to allow the rat to breathe comfortably.
Its a bit of an art.

Generally, I don't bother with them anymore, though. I just let the rat get on with it. If he pulls them out, I'll make a decision on what to do when it happens. I've been quite lucky so far.

So thats castration for you.
If you get a good vet, the risk is really minimal and it can make a HUGE difference to a rat, allowing him to live with others harmoniously again and to become happier and more relaxed in himself.

It is an op that should be done to make a rat more comfortable and let him live a better quality life. It should NOT be done for the following reasons:

1. I don't like the smell of males, or the way they scent mark me! (tough shit, thats bucks for you. Get girls.)
2. I don't like the appearance of male rat balls (yes, I've actually known people to castrate purely for this reason. Again, get girls. If you can't handle the sight of bollocks, either grow up and deal with it, or choose the bollock-less gender)

I despise the above two reasons for castrating a rat.
You only ever put a rat through an operation if it is in the rat's best interest, NOT just your own. Rats can and do die during operations, so risking this for something as lame as just not liking the look of rat nuts is horribly selfish.

There is strong evidence that castrated rats live slightly longer than un-castrated rats, and have lower incidences of some disease but this alone is not a good reason to castrate, for me.
I know folks who routinely castrate all their males as a matter of course, to prevent any potential fighting within the group.
This is not something I would personally do. I believe in saving operations only for cases where it is absolutely necessary.

Castrated rats are also prone to weight gain, which is something I'll go into next time.

Any questions, hit me up.

Lost two of my rats last night.
I came home to find my girl, Manhattan, dead. It wasn't a shock, she had a lump which couldn't be removed due to her lungs being shot, so I knew her time was limited. She'd had real problems with her lungs recently. I wasn't too surprised to find she'd passed.

But then, in the same cage, not far from her, I found my boy Hoffman dead.
This was totally NOT expected.
Hoffman was a rat I took on early last year. He came from a horrendous place where he was shut in a cage with 35 other rats, and a small cage at that. The owner would literally just open the door and throw a handful of food in. He had to fight for everything he had.
He was 9 months old when he came here, but he looked about 2 years +. He was skin and bone, had no muscle in his hind legs, his coat was scruffy and dull and awful, and he had severe behavioural problems.
This is Hoffman going for me on his first week:

http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/mandy10.jpg

He had spent so long crammed in with other rats that he had gone a bit mad. He was convinced he had to fight for everything he had, which included space, so he would routinely go for me because he was so territorial.
He despised other rats, and if he were even in the same room as one, he would literally thrash about in his cage doing threat displays. Rats have scent glands on their flank, which they scratch at a bit to make them ooze, them rub them over things.
Hoffman had scratched at his so much that he'd made them bleed and they'd abscessed. He could not relax; his whole day was spent scent marking, hissing, screaming and throwing himself around his cage.

Some pics of his usual behaviour:

scent marking
http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/hoffmanfa3.jpg

His general shit condition, complete with greasy patches
http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/hoffmanfa4.jpg
http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/hoffmanfa2.jpg

Hoffman's terrified face; this is how rats look when they cry: ears pinned back, whiskers forward, eyes wide. Then they make a horrible, high pitched whine.
http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/mandy9.jpg

It were as if now he finally had space to himself, he was terrified it was going to go away again.

In the end, I managed to get him to stop biting me, and trust me, but he was still impossible with other rats.
So I had him castrated once he was stronger.

Over time, this turned him into a different rat. He gained more weight, his coat condition came back, his muscle came back, and he was moved in with the girls. He settled right in, and was never, ever a problem again. I could pick him up, kiss his belly, do what I wanted to him, and he would just lay back and take it.

In his old age, he got fat. He was very fat. To be honest, while I don't give any of my rats too many 'naughty' treats, I made no effort to slim him down. In my mind, he fucking deserved to be able to eat what he wanted, he'd been denied food for long enough.

These are the last few pics of Hoffman.

http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/hoffmanfa5.jpg
http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/hoffmanfa1.jpg

Hoff giving kisses to Jon, showing how wonderful and gentle he became:
http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/rio11.jpg

He turned into a lovely, shiny, plump, docile rat. He even went on to live harmoniously with another castrated male. I adored Hoffman.
He was well over 2 when he died. But his death was a shock as he had NO prior health problems, and the night before, he was the picture of health.
He seems to have died in his sleep.

But know this......he was super attached to Manhattan. She was one of the first rats he really bonded with, and they were always together.
The state of rigor in their bodies showed that Manhattan died before Hoffman.
Hoffman had no reason to die, health-wise, and I wonder if Manhattan's death was something to do with it. Rats do bond very strongly, particularly rats like Hoff who had so many issues from the start.

I will miss them both.

Got a new baby today. Don't really wanna go too much into where he came from, but a work acquaintance gave him to me because he couldn't keep him any more.
I've called him Hector, after the first rat in space.
I think he's about 8 weeks old:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?.....p;l=c06bc6abde

And I took a load of photos of Larry for his breeder so she could see his progress, and thought I'd show them here if anyone wanted to use them as rat anatomy reference for art:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?.....4d0&type=1

He's a double rex, so possibly not the best rat to use for anatomy, but as long as you take into account the odd coat and curly whiskers, it should be fine.

So we got a new baby the other day, of the feline type rather than ratty type for once!

We got our other cat, Misty, a few months back as a rescue and she seemed that she'd benefit from the company of another cat as she is very affectionate and clingy, and previously lived with other cats.

So we went onto the freeads to find a nearby cat rescue cat that needed a home. We didn't have any requirements other than it was friendly and got on with other cats. No specific age or gender in mind.
On the first page, a little black girl came up, only 9 weeks old, free to good home, used to other cats and dogs. And only 7 miles away.

Black cats are notoriously hard to rehome. They're routinely euthanised because no-one seems to want them. Even kittens face this fate. Shelters don't want them because they tend to sit there for months and not shift, and they are the hardest type of cat to rehome.
But Jon and I love black cats, so we snapped her up.

She was actually found taped inside a cardboard box with her mum and 3 siblings, just down the road from the vet I used to work for. Its only their meowing that alerted the woman's daughter to their presence.
So she took them home, and this girl was the last one left.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?.....60b&type=1

I named her Magic. She is skinny, has fleas and ear mites, and worms too.
Today she went to the vet for a microchip, flea treatment, wormer and drops for her ears.

My other cat, Misty, is gradually getting used to her, but still hisses at her sometimes, but she's getting better each day. They may never be best friends, but I think they'll tolerate each other.
So now Im paranoid about keeping all windows and doors shut because she can't go out for a long while yet.
I won't even have her spayed until she's 6 months, so we have a long wait!

Misty goes out a little, but tends to just stay in the garden, or wander about close to the house.
I have no issue with cats going outside, as long as they're neutered and chipped with relevant vaccines, and the area you live in is relatively quiet, so if you have an issue with cats going out, please keep it to yourself as you will not win that debate with me :)

Anyway, today she had smoked salmon and prawns as a treat, to apologise for making her get chipped today. She's come a long way from being found sealed in a box!

Im looking for a copy of the episode 'don't feed the bears' from the animal planet series 'fatal attractions'; a series focusing on people's relationships with dangerous wild animals. This episode focused on bears and wolf dogs.
Im looking for the entire episode.
It is available streaming on several sites, but ONLY to US residents.

Basically, every source I can find it, it is only available to the USA. I was even willing to buy it, but again, it only seems to be for sale to US residents.

There does not appear to be a torrent for that episode that I've found.
I have found small 2 minute clips from the episode, but this isn't really much good for me.

What Im asking is if anyone in the USA is able to download it from a free streaming site that has the whole episode, then send me the file.
I know there are programmes that let you permanently download streaming content; I've done it.

Im not asking anyone to buy it or spend any money on it for me, just that if anyone can obtain it and send me the file, I'd be eternally grateful. Roach is over on monday, and she is terrifed of bears and fascinated by all bear attack shows. I used to have this episode on my SKY planner, but it got eaten and has just disappeared.

How do you introduce new rats to your existing rats?
I get asked about this probably more than anything else, and its an involved process.

I'll do my best to cover all bases here, but if there is anything I've missed that you were wondering, just ask!

Ok, first off, its important to realise that your success in introducing rats to one another will depend on several factors. These include the ages and genders of the rats in question, their individual experiences with other rats, and their personalities.

The easiest intro to do is baby to baby.
Baby rats, under about 15 weeks, tend to accept any other baby without issue.
The second easiest to do is baby to adult. These are usually pretty straightforward.
The hardest is adult to adult, particularly adult male to adult male.
I've done all of these, and never yet failed to get a rat to live with another rat. Sometimes its very hard and takes a lot of time and patience, sometimes it happens the same day.

The other factor affecting success is the rat's previous experiences. If, for example, a baby rat has had a bad experience with an adult rat, he might be nervous of adult rats and react defensively, which makes intros harder for everyone.
If a baby has never seen an adult other than its mother, it may also be scared of big rats.

Its worth mentioning that baby rats do best in pairs. Baby rats are like human children: they feel better if they have a friend with them when facing a potentially scary situation.
Babies behave differently to adult rats, and it is for this reason that most breeders prefer to home babies in pairs rather than singly. Babies are majorly playful, and this can begin to irk adult rats after a while. With another baby to play with, they can roll around and wrestle to their heart's content! Its just easier for a baby to cope with the potential stress of meeting big adults if he has another baby with him.

This guide applies to males and females equally, BUT Im probably focusing slightly more on males just because they're harder to work with, female intros tend to be easier. But these steps still apply equally to females if needed.

So, lets begin with the easiest way to do an intro; baby to baby.
Quite frankly? Just plonk them in the cage together. There. Done. Baby rats really do just take to other babies as if they've always been best friends. Think of them like human children: its easier for a 5 year old to make friends than a 40 year old!
Aggression in baby rats is incredibly rare. Most babies will accept other babies, they do not need to be related.

For baby to adult intros, a word of caution.
If we're talking about bucks, always ensure a baby is at LEAST 7 weeks old before you try to introduce him to adult males. Adult males have been known to kill baby rats under 6 weeks of age.
Assuming you have a 7 week or older baby, begin by letting the babies and adults free range together somewhere neutral.
This means a space that none of the rats view as their territory, so somewhere they don't normally go.
Introducing rats on a territory they view as their own just increases the chance of problems, as they will naturally try and defend this area.
A place a lot of people use as a 'neutral' area is the bathtub.
Most rats have never been here, have no claim to it, and are slightly unnerved by being in the tub, so they tend to focus more on their own concerns about this weird new place than on beating up newcomers!
Let the existing rats and the newbies just wander about and interact.
You'll probably find they ignore one another for about 5-10 minutes. This is normal.
After this time, when they've settled down a bit, they may start noticing the newbies.

Be aware: baby rats, like baby humans, make a lot of fuss over nothing.
Depending on how bold your baby is (and some are positively cheeky, chasing adults around, trying to leap on them and play, others are timid and hold back) you will probably hear them squeak or squeal at some point.
This is normal. They're not being hurt, they're just whining, as kids do.
Its unusual for an adult rat to harm a baby over 7 weeks. But be aware that babies DO have to know their place. They will likely be pinned down on their backs, nibbled, pushed about a bit, this is all normal and you should allow it to take its course.

The general rule is: no blood, no foul.
Ie, if no blood has been shed, they should be left to it. Rats are capable of inflicting serious wounds, or even killing one another if they wish. If they're not wounding or drawing blood, then they're not being truly aggressive.

You'll probably find baby to adult intros go pretty smoothly. If you're happy with how they are getting on in the neutral area (all rats settling down beside one another to sleep is a great sign they've made friends) then try the babies in the cage with the adults.
This is where you might see an escalation in controntational behaviour. The adults are telling the babies 'right, know this, this is MY house so if you wanna move in, you play by MY rules'.

What are signs of aggression in rats, and what are not?

Sometimes, people not that experienced with rat behaviour mistake normal rat social behaviour for aggression. I know it can be worrying watching your tiny baby amongst all these huge rats, but by pulling the baby out of the situation whenever he so much as peeps, you're just making the intro more confusing for the rats.
Rats NEED to set down the rules with one another about who is boss and what you can and can't do here, just like human children.
If rats are not allowed to teach the babies this, it prolongs the whole process.

Normal social behaviour among rats includes:
Power grooming - the dominant rat will pin the other rat under him and nibble him all along his head, back or neck. Sometimes the subordinate rat might even squeak as this is happening, but don't worry; he is not being harmed.
This is the dominant rat's way of saying 'I accept you into my group, so Im going to groom you. But I want you to know Im boss, so Im gonna groom you HARD'.

Pinning - rats show dominance over other rats in a similar way to wolves; by pinning the subordinate rat on its back and just holding it there. As with wolves, its usually a case of the subordinate WILLINGLY presenting its belly, not so much being 'forced' to the ground. This is something people often misunderstand about wolves, and one reason why the 'alpha roll' techique in dog training is such bullshit.

Boxing - rats tend to 'box' one another by rearing onto their hind legs and paddling their front feet together while staring at one another. Sometimes they'll stand there for ages, just looking at one another, occasionally batting paws. The idea of this is sort of a 'first one to back down and walk off loses'. Sometimes these are perfectly amicable little staring contests where, once one rat opts out, they both go about their business and thats that.
Sometimes boxing can escalate to more serious behaviour.


Signs of aggression in rats include:

Fur fluffing - angry rats bristle their fur. Defensive or scared rats also do this. This is to make themselves look bigger and more threatening.

Sidling - this is a sort of 'sideways' crab walk, usually with the head down, where the dominant rat will try and 'herd' the subordinate into a corner. You'll probably also see the dominant rat try to 'kick' the other rat with its hind leg in a kind of karate style.

Pushing the whiskers forward - you might notice I put this in my art when a rat is supposed to be scared or defensive. Its a very obvious sign of an unhappy rat.

Teeth chattering/cracking - While rats grind their teeth together when they're happy (called 'bruxing') they also chatter their teeth when they're angry or stressed, and there is a difference in the sound. Happy bruxing is more a soft, 'ch-ch-ch' sound, whereas angry teeth chattering is a 'cracking' sound. You learn to tell the difference.

Hissing - rats hiss. If you suck air in through your teeth in a 'ffff' sound in short, repetative bursts, thats pretty much how a hissing rat sounds. This is always either defensive or aggressive. Happy, relaxed rats don't hiss.

Teeth baring - scared or pissed off rats will bare their teeth or have their mouth open. As you can probably guess, this is their way of saying 'LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THESE TEETH! DON'T THINK I WON'T USE THEM!'

Chasing - its normal for rats to follow one another, but you'll know when a rat is aggressively chasing another as they'll turn the speed right up. They can really run when they want. You'll probably also hear lots of banging or screaming as the other rat tries desperately to escape. In the wild, rats chase other rats off their turf, and don't stop until the intruder is sufficiently far enough away. In a cage, they can't do this, but they don't realise this. Very fast, noisy, frantic chasing with squealing and cornering involved is aggressive behaviour.
But don't confuse this with normal, rowdy rat play. In play, the rat being chased won't look like its about to shit itself in terror.

Rubbing the sides along objects - this is rat scent marking. Male rats have glands on their flanks which create grease. Overly dominant males will smear this along things. In my experience, only very territorial or dominant rats do this, and these rats are usually a bit prone to quick tempers, so watch these kind of rats.

Scuffling their feet into the ground - as above, this is another territorial 'display'.

However, just because you see one of the above behaviours, it doesn't mean your intro is doomed.
The key is to observe your rats closely. If blood is spilled, stop the intro and try again the next day.
If no blood is spilled but the babies appear absolutely traumatised, as in, they've frozen up for the last 5 minutes, crapped themselves, and are glued to the spot in the corner with their teeth bared for the entire time, call it a day and try again tomorrow when they've settled down.

Some people advise smearing all the rats with either chocolate pudding or vanilla essence so they'll all smell the same and it might encourage them to groom the pudding off one another.
Don't bother with this.
Rats are not so stupid that they'll be fooled into thinking a stranger is a friend just because they all smell the same. Rats recognise their own group on more than just smell.
You may also hear people say that you should switch the cages about, and let the newbie wander about in the resident rat's cage while the resident rats explore the newbies cage, in order to get them more used to one another's smell.
Honestly? I don't do this. I haven't done this for years, and I don't find it makes much difference.

Now the hard one: adult male to adult male.
You'll want to follow pretty much the same routine as with babies to adults, ie, neutral territory first always. The main difference is that whereas its possible to get babies into the group the same day, you'll probably struggle with adults.
You may need to do the 'bath-tub run' every day for several days before you can be comfortable moving to the cage. Some adult rat intros take weeks of daily work to achieve.

Also realise that you may not need to take all these steps, or take them for so long, it totally depends on your rats reactions. If things are going well, go faster. If things are going badly, go back a step.

While you can probably turn your back on your adults with the babies and not have to worry about anything nasty happening, this may not be the case with adult to adult.
Adult rats, particularly males, tend not to like other strange adults. Its just not in their nature to accept adult newcomers into their group.

Now I've done MANY adult male intros, and I have over 25 unrealted, uncastrated adult males living harmoniously (for the most part) together. With enough patience and dedication, its entirely possible.
Some adults are easier to introduce than others.
I have adult males that I know would accept any other adult male into the group without question; they're just accepting, easy going rats who don't particularly care who comes and goes (usually, these are the low ranking rats.)
But I have some that I know will cause trouble with almost every new boy I bring in.

It is quite dependant on the personality of your rat, and the new rat.
Sometimes, it can actually be the newcomer that can be the aggressor, while your rat might be quite relaxed with a new addition.

Once you're comfortable with the interactions on neutral grounds, try running them on a territory that belongs to your resident rats, such as their usual free range area.
If this goes terribly wrong, take a step back and go back to neutral ground.
If it goes well, you can move onto putting the newbies in the cage.

Its always in the cages where you will see the most fighting or drama. Even rats that have appeared to get on fabulously on neutral ground or on free range may take a dislike to one another once in the cage.
Rats are wired to protect their territory against strangers, so this is all they're doing. They may have accepted the newbie on neutral ground, but having him in their house is a little different.
So don't freak out if there is a little fighting in the cage.
Again, only intervene if there is wounding or blood.
The longer the new rat is in the cage, the more used to him the others will become. When you see them sleeping in a pile together, you know you have succeeded.

Now, I will say this: do I follow all these steps every time I intro?
No.
I've had rats 14 years, I can tell within seconds how an intro will go based on the personality of the rat.
Some adult males I have actually put directly into the resident rat's group, no free range together, no neutral meeting, just straight in, something that would petrify some people.
And its been fine, because I correctly guessed the behaviour of the new rat and my rats.

If I think the new rat is going to be a bit challenging, I will indeed still follow the neutral territory step first. It totally depends on the rat Im trying to put into the group.
The more experienced you become with rats, the easier intros become, because you know exactly what your rats are going to do, how they're thinking, what sets them off and what does, what type of rats they accept and which they tend to object to.
But for someone on their first or second group of rats? I'd advise following the above steps.
Do as I say, don't do as I do, as they say.
If you're experienced, you probably already have your own method of intro that works for you.
If you're not experienced, do the above, as it is tried and tested.

The important things to remember are:
Be patient. If you have a bolshy male to introduce to another bolshy male, you might need weeks of work. Don't give up. I have only ever had one rat in 14 years that couldn't live with another, and he probably could have done had I tried harder, but he was very old and I didn't want to stress him.

Don't interferre too much if there is no blood or serious aggression, you'll just prolong the process.

Remember that rats rarely kill other rats. Its not in their nature. They prefer to chase the intruder away rather than waste energy and risk injury by serious aggression.

Intros can be as easy as pie, or they can be long drawn out affairs. If you need help, ask me. Its hard to cover all possible eventualities in a blog like this, as things always pop up that need specific discussion.

Oh, and today's photos!:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/.....0ef&type=1

I have several people a week note me for advice on rats. I thought it might be handy to answer some of the more common questions I get asked here. And of course, feel free to ask me anything you want to know!

Which is best, male or female rats?
This is entirely personal choice, and depends on what you want from a pet.
Male rats are bigger, generally lazier, more 'cuddly' and more chilled out.
Girls are more active, independant and busy.
But both are loving, affectionate, playful animals.

Some people prefer girls because they want a pet that they can watch going about its life, and girls do tend to be 'on the go' for longer.
Others prefer boys because they want a big cuddly lap pet that will chill with them on the sofa.
Personally, I prefer boys. Im more of a person who wants to cuddle with my rat than watch it use me as a climbing frame!

Also bear in mind that females are far more prone to mammary tumours, which usually require surgical removal, and some females can have multiple tumours in their lives. Some have none.
Mammary tumours do occur in males, but far less often.
Females also come into season every 3 days or so, and during this period are more jumpy and skittish.
Males tend to be more prone to scent marking which, for rats, involves leaving little pee trickles over things they want to claim as theirs. Honestly? You don't even notice it after a while. Its not as bad as it sounds.
Girls are less likely to do this, but some still do.

However its worth remembering that all rats are individuals. I've had some girls who acted more boy-like, and vice versa. Some boys never keep still, while some girls will happily chill out with you.
But in general, boys = lazy lumps and girls = busybodies.

What do rats actually eat?
Rats are omnivores, like us, and in the wild they eat a huge range of foods from insects, berries, small mammals, fish, eggs, nuts, lizards, frogs and human left-overs.
Pet rats should be fed a high quality dry mix, supplemented with fresh foods.
As a guide, I feed my rats a home made mix which uses Harrisons Banana Bunny brunch as a base.
This is a rabbit food, but makes a great base for a home-made mix. To this, I add dried pasta twists, jumbo rolled oats, unsweetened rice cakes, unsweetened cereals (which differ depending on what is on offer or available, but usually include bran flakes, weetabix, shreddies etc), crushed wholegrain crackers like Ryvita, Nairns oat cakes, some seeds like linseed, and an animal protein source.
The animal protein could be crushed dog biscuits, dog kibble, or dried meal worms, all these work well in a dry mix.
I change this mix up a bit now and then to keep them interested.
Below you can see a typical week's mix:

http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/ratmix.jpg

For fresh foods, they tend to have whatever Im having, but staples are:
Curly Kale (its like a cabbage, its really good for them, available in Tesco), fish, chicken (don't be afraid to give the bones; rats cannot choke on bones as they grind their food to a powder before eating, and bones make a great toy for them as they bore into them to get the marrow out) wholegrain bread, cous cous, blueberries, porridge (with olive oil for their coats) and on and on!
They can basically eat most of the things we eat. If its bad for us, it tends to be bad for them. So while a little nibble of fries or burger won't harm them now and then as a treat, feed this stuff all the time and you'll have unhealthy rats just like you'd have an unhealthy human if they ate junk food all the time.

Do not feed oranges to male rats, they give them kidney cancer. Though they appear to be safe for females, I don't feed any citrus fruits.
Don't feed liquorice.
Chocolate is toxic to rats HOWEVER, the amount they would need to eat to cause them problems is truly excessive, so a little bit here and there will not harm them in the slightest. In fact, dark chocolate is a handy thing to have in the event of respiratory problems, as it helps open the airways.

Baby rats have different nutrient requirements to adults. Baby rats need a lot of protein in their diet, specifically animal protein.
Baby rats have an incredibly fast rate of growth, and their bodies need this protein to support this. Baby rats not given animal protein do not thrive.
While it is possible to keep an adult rat on a vegan diet (though not something I would ever do), it is not possible to raise healthy babies on a vegan diet.
So if you have babies, make sure they get lots of scrambled egg, chicken, and kitten food.

Also, bear in mind that rats are Neophobic, meaning they fear new things that they've not experienced before. As a result, rats will often not eat a new food they've never seen before, it often takes them seeing a more experienced rat eating it before they'll try it too.

Can you spay/neuter rats?
Absolutely. I have lots of castrated boys.
However, bear in mind that any operation on a small animal like a rat carries a risk. It is thought that a rat is 10 times more likely to die under anaesthetic than a dog or cat.
Therefore, if you are going to put the rat at this risk, you should only do so for its own benefit.
Some people will castrate boys because they 'don't like the look of their balls' or 'it makes their fur softer' or 'it stops them scent marking'. These are NOT good reasons, in my mind.
I castrate male rats only when they are unable to live harmoniously in a group, and the alternative is a life in solitary confinement.
Hormonal male rats tend to be very stressed, upset animals, and castration allows them to live a happy, relaxed life again. We are talking about rats that rip chunks out of other rats, or that spend all day stomping about in their cage, enraged. These rats are better off castrated; it can't be nice to live life constantly pissed off.
As for spaying a female, this can also be done, but is a more invasive operation than a castrate. Its also pretty painful.
Some people spay females as a matter of course with an aim to prevent mammary tumours later in life. I personally do not as I don't feel the benefits outweigh the risk of the surgery, and have not seen enough of an issue with mammary tumours in my rats to begin retroactive spaying.
Remember, a male rat can still father offspring for 2 weeks after a castration!


Can I keep a lone rat?
No.
Sadly, people still do. I did back when I got my first, but this was 14 years ago, there was no internet, and every book told you that this was ok to do.
Now, we know better, and have a wealth of information online so there is no excuse for anyone to deliberately get a lone rat.
Rats are very social. In the wild, they live in large groups, some as large as 60. Rats are much like wolves in their social structure, and every rat in the group has a position and role.
Keeping a rat alone is like keeping a wolf alone, or keeping a human in solitary confinement.
While rats definately bond with their human friend, there is no way we can provide what another rat can. Rats groom one another, sleep huddled in a pile, communicate with each other in pitches we can't even hear, play together etc. With the best will in the world, we cannot provide what another rat provides.
Babies particularly suffer when kept alone, and tend to not thrive.
Added to which, a rat's most active period tends to be when we are sleeping.
Some people keep a lone rat because they think it will bond better to them. Firstly, there is no evidence of this.
I have 47, and each and every one runs to the bars to see me and clearly knows me and loves me.

Secondly, even if this were true, its a cruel thing to do to keep a social animal on its own just because you want it to bond closer to you; do you really want a relationship with an animal where you know it only loves you because it has no-one else to be friends with?
Personally, I prefer knowing that all my rats have other rats to play with, but they still choose to be with me.

It is extremely rare to find a rat that absolutely will not live with other rats.
99% of rats will accept at least one other rat if all correct avenues are followed (proper intros, castration if necessary). In 14 years, I've only had one rat who would not accept another rat, and he probably would have done had I pushed him harder, but he was very elderly so I opted to not stress him with intros in his final months.

Can my rat play with my dog/cat/parrot/rabbit etc
NO.
Rats should never be allowed to interact out of the cage with other animals, regardless of species.
Rats are both predator and prey.
They can, and have, killed rabbits, hamsters, mice, chinchillas, birds and guinea pigs.
And similarly, they have been killed by dogs and cats.
No matter how 'trustworthy' you think your pet is, you cannot predict any animal 100% of the time. Perhaps your dog will never actually harm the rat, but do you want to take the risk?
Even if the risk is only small, why take it?
There is nothing to be gained from letting rats interact with other species. The only reason people do it is because they think its cute to see two different species 'playing'. This is not a good enough reason, in my mind, to risk your rats life, or the life of your other pet.
We've all seen these videos of rats perched alongside cats, dogs etc. This is NOT ok. Its dangerous, and the people who do it are playing with their rat's safety for their own amusement.
Rats get no benefit from 'playing' with a dog or cat that they wouldn't get from playing with another rat, or you.

In my time in the rat community, I've heard at least two distinct disaster stories of species interaction.
One was a dog who had 'played' with the rats for an entire year without issue. Then one day, for whatever reason, killed one. The owner was absolutely traumatised and gave the same old line of 'we never thought she'd do this!'.
The second involved someone's pet rats escaping their cage at night, getting into the chinchilla cage and killing both chinchillas. The owner awoke to a bloodbath.

Keep them apart. Through the bars, where the rat is contained? Fine.
But never let them 'free roam' together.
Also remember that lots of rats instinctively know the smell of a predator, and just being in the same room with one can upset them. Some of mine clearly know a cat is bad news as they freeze up then scatter when my cat emerges.
The others don't seem to notice or care.
Respect these animals; don't subject them to risks and fear by mixing them with predators.

What are a rat's temperature requirements?
Pretty much the same as ours.
If you're cold, chances are your rats are feeling the cold too. If you're too hot, they probably are aswell.
However, its important to know this: heat kills rats far more often than cold.
Rats do not tolerate excessive heat well; they can, and do, drop dead. It is vital you never leave your rat in direct sunlight, and that he is never left in high temperatures.
Rats can tolerate the cold pretty well, particularly if they have lots of bedding and lots of other rats to cuddle up to.
I don't worry half as much about my rats in the winter as I do in the summer.
I've lost rats through heat. I've never lost one to cold.
They are nocturnal animals and designed to be out in the cooler conditions of the nights, not in direct sunlight in the day time.

My rat is fat; should I worry?
Probably not, unless he's shaped like a beachball and has trouble moving or grooming or eating.
What do you consider fat? It might not be what I consider fat. A normal weight for an adult buck is about 600 - 700grams.
For a doe, about 350 - 450grams.
But I have had boys weighing 900grams who are overweight, but not obese; they're just chunky, solid rats. Rats from good breeders tend to run larger than pet shop or BYB rats.

In my personal opinion, people can be a little paranoid about fat rats.
I will say this: I prefer a rat to be fat than skinny.
When rats get ill, they decline fast, and they drop weight like crazy. I prefer all my rats to be a bit overweight as this gives them reserves if and when they become ill.
Also, in my 14 years of rat keeping, and having had many fat rats from many different situations, I have seen absolutely no evidence that overweight rats live shorter lives than 'normal' ones.
And from talking to other rat people, most agree.

I have one notable tub of lard rat; Hoffman. He is genuinely fat as opposed to muscular, and is structurally not a big rat so he is just fat.
However, he is castrated, which tends to make boys fat despite your best efforts. He came from a horrific place where he'd spent the first 9 months of his life crammed into a small cage with 30 other rats. He was skin and bone when I got him, and pretty pissed off. He ran at me, teeth bared, intending to chomp me a few times.
We didn't think he'd live to an old age.
He was castrated, fed properly, and is now over 2 and going strong.
I have no intention of making him diet.
Rats live 3 years at the best of times, more often closer to 30 months, and I personally don't believe in denying him food just to try and potentially squeeze perhaps a month extra life from him.
We're not talking about a dog, which could have 14 years of life in it. We're talking about an animal that in the best case scenario only lives to 3, and for which there is no evidence that being moderately overweight affects lifespan.
Hoffman is getting old, he's castrated, he's overweight, but he's a changed rat from the poor, stressed, savage, bony thing that turned up here, who we didn't think would make it to 18 months.

Angry boney Hoff:
http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/mandy10.jpg

Happy cake filled hoff:
http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/hoffcake.jpg

Thats it. More will come to me, Im sure. But feel free to debate, ask, question, contest etc to your heart's content.

So....a few weeks back, I happened across a woman who needed to rehome two of her boys.
No problem, I thought, I have space for 2, and she seemed to be having trouble finding them somewhere.

We chatted over email. She was in Barnet, which is a pretty reasonable distance from me. But she actually said she'd bring them to me. This is something that doesn't happen often, but usually shows the person really cares about getting the rats somewhere safe.
She claimed to have M.E and be in and out of hospital a lot, so she couldn't give them the time they needed.

She also told me that thus far, the only response she'd had for her plea to rehome them, aside from myself, was snake owners asking if they could take them on as food, or breeders to make 'food'.
Im frankly absolutely fucking sickened by these 'people'.
Who responds to an advert where someone clearly states these are loved pets, with a request to take them on and murder them? What kind of brain damage do you have to have to do that? And this wasn't one person, this was several people mailing her.
And she isn't the first person I've spoken to who has told me they've recieved these kind of mails when trying to rehome their rats.
You know, I try so hard to be open minded and non-judgemental about people who own large snakes, and tell myself that they're not all morons. But 99% of the ones I encounter ARE.
You are a special kind of fucked up to want to kill a loving, affectionate baby rat in the first place, but to message people and ask if you can have their loved pets so you can kill them is just fucked up beyond belief.

So I quickly told her to tell these people exactly where to go, and try not to get too disheartened by them.
Im sure many 'free to good home' rats do end up being murdered for snake food. But at least these ones wouldn't be.

So on the day she is travelling down to meet me, I tell her to let me know when she is about an hour away, and I'd drive up to Norwich.
She texts me and says she is bringing 4 rats. Not 2. I'd been told 2, so I was a bit taken-aback to now have 4 to deal with. I think I was a little hurt too, because I felt like she'd decieved me a bit by not being straight with me on how many she was bringing.

So the plan was to rehome two when they arrived.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately depending on how you look at it, that didn't happen.
When I picked them up, far from being the 4-5 month old boys she'd said, they were all around 8 weeks.
Im usually very good at distancing myself from rats I know are going to be rehomed, but I just fell in love with these 4. They were so affectionate, licky, docile and lovely.
I always like Jon to be comfortable with any rat decisions I make, but he said I could keep all four.

So here they are!
There are two agouti top-ears, Subway and Dante. Subway is bigger, slightly darker, but he has a horrible respiratory infection, so is off to the vet tomorrow.
Then there is Jon's little boy, Boston, the only dumbo. I think he's the omega of the group, because he has that look to him and is very submissive toward the others. Lovely little boy though.
And finally Broadway, a little agouti hoody, and the smallest.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/.....2da&type=1


They're all in quarantine at the moment as I cannot risk them bringing anything into my group, not with the way Subway is crackling. In two weeks, they'll be clear to meet the rest of my boys.

To look at them and think they could have been fed to a fucking snake if their owner hadn't been smart enough to tell these people to go fuck themselves, is horrifying.

Well! There you have it.....

So I've decided to do a little run down of rat anatomy for anyone who wants to start drawing them, or is just generally interested. I appreciate not everyone has 40+ rats to study, so I try to take as many photos as I can.

For the purpose of this, we are talking only about Rattus Norvegicus, and no other rat species.

Teeth
Most people who draw rat characters draw the teeth wrong. Even big animation companies do it.
For a start, rats do not have teeth that run down the length of their jaw, like a dog or cat. They have two pairs of incisors at the front of their mouth, for gnawing and biting, and two pairs of grinding molars right at the back. Thats it. The only teeth you will ever actually see unless your rat is dead or sedated and you can poke about right at the back of its mouth, are the front incisors.
The others are too far back to be seen.
It is also interesting to note that a rat's bottom teeth are not fused together. They can wobble apart, seperate, and move about. This often causes people to panic that their rat has a tooth problem, but its perfectly normal. When rats bite a foe, and they mean it, they can sink their lower teeth in, then actually split them apart so the wound that is inflicted is widened.
If you are ever bitten by a rat seriously, you'll have two wounds, one where the top teeth went in, and one where the bottom teeth went in.
The bottom teeth always do the most damage.

Here is a photo of my past rat, Warlock, showing how void a rats mouth actually is.
They also have rather human-like tongues:
http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/luci6.jpg

Big tongues....:

http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/luci16.jpg

So if your rat character is grinning, he should not have a big mouth full of gleaming, white teeth, like a game-show host.

Also, whatever teeth you do see shouldn't be white.
A rats top incisors should be vibrant orange.
The lower incisors should be a dull yellow.
This is not plaque or poor personal hygeine; this is the colour of the enamel.
Below, you can see Theo showing off his pearly.....uh....oranges:

http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/ratteeth.jpg

If a rat DOES have white incisors, it means there is something wrong with it. Anemia is a common cause. Below, you can see the white teeth of a rescue boy I used to own called Jacob. He had anemia :

http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/jacobteeth.jpg

Another feature of the rat's mouth are the skin flaps inside. Behind their front teeth, rats have two flaps of skin, which they can close like a curtain. This means they can chew on things without risk of them swallowing or inhaling the particles.
In the below photo of Warlock, you can just see the bumps behind his front teeth at the top where they are:

http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/luci12.jpg

And they're visible here:
http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/halloween19.jpg
http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/halloween39.jpg


Noses

Rats have odd noses. With regards to art, they can look completely different depending on what angle you're viewing the rat from, and even what mood the rat is in.
The first thing to be aware of is that a rat's nose only ever comes in pink.
They are never black. Forget cartoons where someone has drawn a rat with a round, bobbly black nose. It does not exist, and Im not sure why people do it.
Unlike cats and dogs, there is no change in the colour of the nose relative to the colour of the rat.
Even black rats have pink noses, as Henry demonstrates:

http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/ratnose2.jpg

A rats nose is small, slightly rectangular, with a line down the middle. A rat's nose is actually pretty flexible. And it can actually cause the skin over the top of the nose to 'droop' over the pink, pretty much obscuring its whole nose.
Rats tend to do this when they yawn, and sometimes when they're scared.
Below, you can see what I mean. This yawning rat now has some kind of weird ant-eater nose, and the pink bit isn't visible at all anymore:

http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/ratnose.jpg

Here is Hoffman doing like-wise:
http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/mandy8.jpg

Head

A rat, unlike a dog, doesn't have a 'stop' at the forehead. A rats head, view side on, is almost one long continuous curve. There is a tiny alteration of direction just over the rat's eye, but it is nothing compared to the angular head dogs have:

http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/rathead.jpg

For the sake of it, I've also included a side view of a top-eared rat's head. Some people mistakenly believe that dumbo eared rats have a different skull shape to top-eared. This is not the case. It is simply an optical illusion caused by the positioning of the dumbo rat's ears. Both their head's are exactly the same:

http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/rio26.jpg

Hands and feet

Rats do not have 'paws'. They have hands. A rat's hand contains 4 fingers, and a nub where a thumb would be. This little nub even has a tiny finger nail on it:

http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/rathand.jpg

In this photo again, you can see the 'bumps' on the bottom of the rat's hands. These are for grip and traction:

http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/jacobteeth.jpg

Rats can hold items with their hands, sometimes one handed, and can also grab, pull and push.
They have curved, non-retractable nails.

Here are some rats using their hands.
Warlock, clutching my finger:
http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/rathand2.jpg

Kashmir, sleeping with balled up fists (a lot of rats do this)
http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/rathand3.jpg

Some rats also clench their fists when they are really enjoying contact with their human. Below is Warlock clenching his fist because I was rubbing his ear.....which he liked:

http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/earscrunch.jpg

Bunty using her hand to drink from. Some rats prefer to scoop liquids into their hands to drink, as its believed this allows them to be more on the alert for danger than lowering their head down to it:

http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/mira12.jpg

Rat feet have 5 toes, but one is set lower on the side of the foot, kind of like a 'thumb toe':

http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/rio28.jpg

On the underside of their feet, they have the same bumps as on their hands. I don't have many pics of the underside of rat feet, so you'll have to make do with this one of my hairless, Lenny, who also had sore heels!

http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/ratfoot.jpg

Tail

The part of a rat people seem to hate most.
It is not: slimy, sticky, wet, cold or anything else people like to think.
A rats tail is smooth, warm, and feels much like human skin. It is covered in tiny scales, and bristles, meaning if you stroke it in the wrong direction its prickly. If you go 'with' the hair, its very silky.
Here is a close view of a rat's tail, showing the scales and bristles:

http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/happyrat.jpg


I plan to cover more things in future.
Any questions, just ask!

Most of the boys ran in the front room today.
The only boys missing are Tyrus and Agent Orange, who are bullies and disrupt the group horrendously, Mortemain and Harlem, who both have bad legs and are isolated to recover, and the three old boys from yesterday's photos, who do not mix with this group as they're too old and frail to stress with intros.
Every other boy is there, including new boy Miles who turned up today (and no, don't get on my arse about quarantine; he has been a lone rat for a while and not mixed with any others).

All got along perfectly, even Dexter.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?.....p;l=9dcff9a928

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?.....p;l=8fcffe9879

I have recently taken in 4 new boys.
3 of them are thought to be very elderly, and are here just to live out however long they have left in comfort and without stress. They've retired here, basically. They all came from a horrendous situation.
A woman had been taken into care, and her son stated she had animals that needed rehoming. When the rescuers got there, there was no surface in the house that wasn't covered with either objects or shit.
There were dead rats in cages, dead birds in cages, and rats running free.
The rats were running free with 16 ferrets, some dogs and some cats. Typical hoarder situation.
Its amazing they survived at all.
23 rats were removed from the location, and only 11 made it out of the vet's office. The others were too ill to be saved.

3 of these boys came to me. They're all skinny, scabby rex boys. The previous rescuer did a fabulous job with them, they just really need some weight putting on them.
I'll try and get some pics soon.
One is a PEW I've named Angel, one is a black/agouti hoody called Sgt. Pepper, and one is a siamese/himi called Rocket Man.
They're gorgeous boys who just need a normal, happy life. I can't imagine the hell they've been living in til now.

The other lad came from the same rescuer, and he's called Dexter. He was a stud buck, and has fathered a few litters, but he is finding life with other rats stressful and hard. His mum thought he needed to come to a smaller rattery, and he'll most likely be castrated and put in with girls, as apparently, he gets on fine with girlies.
He's a wheaten burmese.
I've always wanted a burmese (my cartoon Hoffman rat is a burmese) and he's a lovely looking boy.

Pics soooooon.

Shadowrat now has 36 permanent residents.

As you know, I take on rescue rats.
Most of the rats I take on are referred to me from the RSPCA (for non-brits, thats the biggest animal welfare charity in the UK, our pathetic version of the Humane Society, I guess).
They began sending me rats after I agreed to take on one little girl, 8 years ago, after she was dumped with a tumour. The RSPCA were going to euthanize her, as they did to most rats that came to them as they didn't have the facilities to care for them. Luckily, I was at work there on that day, and I took her home.
Since then, they've sent me all rats they have come to them, and referred all calls about rescue rats to me.

I've been doing this work for them for 8 years now.
I had never asked for any help with funding in all that time.
A few months ago, I emailed the manager of my branch to ask if there was any possibility of getting financial help, even if it were just for vet's bills, which are arguably the biggest expense.
The manager was a lovely guy, and said he fully agreed I deserved some money, as I was essentially doing the work they didn't want to do.
He admitted that the RSPCA often overlooks small furries and it wasn't fair. He said that if it were up to him, he'd agree for me to get funding. But he needed to get clearance from the trustees.

The trustee meeting was a few weeks back, so today I emailed to ask how it had gone and where we stood on funding.
His response came via telephone, as he said he didn't want to email me some of the things he wanted to say.
Basically, the trustees had refused my request for help.
Thats fine, I can live with that. I have coped so far, I can continue to cope. I never actually expected to get funding realistically, I was just trying my luck, so I hadn't lost anything.

But it was their reasoning for not giving me funding that has me fuming.
They said, and this was quoted to me from the manager: 'we have enough on our plates with dogs and cats, rats just aren't important.'
I am not paraphrasing; this is what was said.

The RSPCA stands for the Royal Society for the prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Animals.
Not dogs and cats.
All the RSPCA campaigns show them helping any and all species, including small furries, but in reality, they clearly don't give a shit. I am frankly disgusted that the biggest animal welfare organisation in the UK, famous the world over, has openly admitted they don't place rats as important.
They bullshit the public in their campaigns, making out like they are there for all animals, when clearly from the horses mouth, anything that isn't a dog or cat isn't considered important by them.

The manager told me that he and a couple of other trustees in the meeting were appalled and tried to fight my case, but they would not agree to any funding going toward helping rats.
They're just not important.

If I did not take these rats on, they would be dumped on the RSPCA's doorstep.
Even if they then simply euthanized them, I am saving them the expense of that, at the very least. I am spending hundreds of pounds out of my own pocket to care for animals that they would otherwise have to be dealing with, and they're not prepared to even toss me a bone now and then to help me out.

I always knew the RSPCA were shit when it came to anything that wasn't a dog or cat, but hearing that come out of the mouths of the people who work there has sickened me.

Its bad enough when joe public says 'its just a rat', but when the country's leading animal welfare organisation says it, you feel totally and utterly alone.

The RSPCA is not short on funds.
3 of their MP trustees have been done for fiddling expenses...one has just been convicted.
I looked at the RSPCA accounts (as a charity they are freely available). They have so much money you wouldnt believe it - trillions! Investments all over the place; that is where people's donations go: investments.
Also there are a considerable amount of people that work for them who earn 80k or over a year.
Their intake in 2008 was £120 million.

Everyone I know has an RSPCA horror story of them refusing to come out to help animals.
They refused to send someone out to rescue a baby seal that had gotten stranded on the beach that my boyfriend discovered on a night walk.
They refused to come out to collect a stray puppy that followed me home one night, telling me I had to board it at my house instead.
They refused to come out to help a muntjac deer that had been hit by a car, saying it 'wasn't their responsibility'.
They refused to send someone out to rescue Fry, my past rat who had been released into the wild and was living in the garden of an abandoned house. I had to travel up on train, go into the house on my own with people I didn't know, put myself at huge risk, and capture him myself. The RSPCA center was 5 minutes down the road from where Fry was.
These are just the stories I know from my friends. Everyone has at least one story of where the RSPCA have failed them.

An elderly man left them a lump of money in his will, and asked them to take care of his dog when he died.
The dog was 15, had cataracts, and was overweight, but was otherwise a healthy old dog. He would have made some elderly person a lovely companion.
The RSPCA euthanised the dog the day the man died.
They regularly euthanise black cats as they are not 'rehomable'.
When I worked at the vets, they would point blank ignore any numbers I sent them for no-kill cat sanctuaries to take on the strays we had come in that they wanted to kill.

The RSPCA sell themselves as a 'no kill' rescue.
This is bullshit.

They are useless, and the worst part is that people still donate to them because they're completely suckered in by their ad campaigns that make out like they're some compassionate, noble organisation who help any and all animals. If the general public really knew how much money they have, and how they routinely pass animals off to smaller rescues to deal with, and how they kill a lot of the animals who come in, they would not donate.

They even have rats on their literature and ad leaflets. They have just admitted to me they don't consider rats important. It is the smaller, home run rescues like myself that save these animals, NOT the RSPCA.
But guess who gets the credit, recognition and donations?
Certainly not us.

My vet's bills today were £97. Thats a weeks wages for me.
The RSPCA will not help me because they are 'just rats' and taking a little from the 120 million pound nest egg would just be far too much trouble.

Yes, Im pissed.

To cut to the point, I have 4 boys off to the vet tomorrow, two for euthanasia, one for chronic abscesses/an immune disorder, and one for a leg problem.

I always pay my vet's bills, I consider it irresponsible to do anything but. All rats of mine will get the care they need, and always have done.
Does that mean its easy? Hell no. I pay for them, but it leaves me without money for myself on many occasions. But noodles are cheap.

Anyway, the purpose of this journal is this: if I opened commissions would anyone be willing to buy one, all money, as always, going to fund my sanctuary? And if so, what would you be willing to pay and what would you want me to do?
Or donations generally are always gratefully recieved, however small, its all fantastic.
Most sanctuaries recieve fairly regular donations, either from members of the public or the people who surrender animals to them. I do not. I have only ever recieved one donation from a friend online, and about £50 in total from owners over the years.......the 8 years.
Its not easy, and at times like this when several are ill at once, its extremely hard. The rats always come first, and their care is paramount, and I manage to get by.
But that doesn't mean that it is easy for me, or that money is freely available; it isn't.

So, if you wanna donate, paypal is here: ratgirl666[at]hotmail.com
If you want a commission, note me and we'll chat about what you want, how much you wanna spend etc.

Thanks to any and all, on behalf of the rats and myself.
x

I am really beginning to lose my patience for the way the world treats rats. I never had much patience for it to begin with, but as I get older, Im less and less inclined to be tolerant.
Maybe its because I've had a few experiences recently that have just smacked me in the face with people's idiocy, ignorance and cruelty.

Im sick to death of a certain kind of snake owner who just views these animals as objects, not even living creatures. I recently had two boys come in who were saved from being snake food. Beautiful, affectionate, gentle, loving animals, and someone was just going to throw them in a freezer to slowly die. Prior to this, they were kept in those god awful ice-cream tubs in big racks, that people who breed rodents for food on a large scale use.
Absolutely sickening.
You all know my view on feeding rats to snakes, I won't go into that again, but if someone MUST keep snakes and MUST feed them rats, surely it should be fucking illegal to keep them in those awful racks?
I know some people who breed their own rats to use as snake food, and they actually keep them in large cages with toys and hammocks, and treat them with some fucking respect. They breed their own specifically because they don't want to fund the rodent farms, and they want to know the rats have had a good life, like buying organic free range as opposed to factory farmed.
I just fail to see why this:

http://www.pro-racks.com/Images/Rat.....use%20rack.JPG


Is legal. Would you be allowed to keep puppies in an equivilent enclosure? Kittens?


Recently, I found a snake owner who had this kind of set up. He was selling it all because his girlfriend didn't want it in the house, and he was no longer keeping reptiles. The rack came with 18 rats and some gerbils.
Someone told him they would buy the rack and the gerbils, but couldn't take the rats as he was allergic to them.
I told him that as he'd sold his rack and just had some rats to get rid of, I'd take them all on as rescues and find them loving homes.
He point blank refused to allow these animals to go as rescues. He didn't want them, he was actively hoping to get rid of them with the rack. I'd offered to not only take them on, but drive the 200 miles to him to pick them up.
He said 'no, I will find something to do with them'.
I said 'well, if that 'something' turns out to be killing them, please remember me and call me'.

He came back with 'of COURSE it means killing them, what else would you do with them?'
That attitude is fucking disgusting. As if these intelligent, loving animals exist only as food and that even when someone offers to take them off you and give them a home to NO inconvinience to you, you don't even care enough to bother. You'd rather have them killed.

Why are you allowed to treat rats like this but not dogs and cats or horses?
Why is it ok for a snake owner to smack a rat's head against a table edge, or freeze it alive in their freezer, or drown it, or throw it live to their snake, yet if you did ANY of this to a cat or dog, the RSPCA would be on you quicker than you can blink.
Why is it ok?

Why are people up in arms about puppy farms, yet those same people happily go and purchase a rat from a pet shop when it has been bred in a similar set up?
Why are the authorities so hot on puppy farms, yet they let pet shops continue to source their animals from this kind of place:

http://www.fancy-rats.co.uk/communi.....=5&t=85838

Im so sick of how people bust a gut to prevent cruelty to one pet species, and turn a blind eye to the same cruelty on another. Pet shops have this happy, jolly, pet-loving front but THAT is where their rats start out in the vast majority of cases.
Does are kept continually pregnant in their little plastic boxes, some can even be nursing one litter while pregnant with another.
Rats that are noticably ill are killed, and I don't even want to imagine how. Any rat returned to a pet shop gets sent back to the breeder in most cases, and guess what happens to them there?
They're either put back in as breeding stock for the rest of their life, or they're killed outright.
When a rat is no longer useful for breeding, they're killed.
How is this any different to a puppy farm? How is it that pet shops are allowed to continue using these horrific farms when if they did the same with puppies, they'd eventually get reprimanded for it.

Im just so sick of people's stupidity and ignorance and complete lack of compassion for other beings.
Its not like rats are stupid, dim, robotic animals that just need food and water to be happy; they're incredibly intelligent, sensitive animals who suffer greatly when they're confined with nothing to do and no chance to run or move.
They're toddler level smart and people think its ok to keep them like that?

The only consolation I get is in knowing that if there is a hell, the people who do this kind of shit to rats will be burning there.