Got rats?

[weezlgrrrl]

I don't mean the pesky kind that eat your wiring and pee in your basement. I mean pet rats. Or mice. Or hamsters, or ferrets, or any other lil' fuzzy critters. It's going to hit 100 in Seattle this week. (I know, big whoop to you Zonies.) But we don't have A/C, and little critters can overheat and die very quickly. So, sharing a wee tip with you.

Comments

[weezlgrrrl]

Oh man. No matter how cute they are, DON'T buy a rat at Petsmart, or any other pet store. This isn't a "pet stores are evil" thing. The problem is, their animals come from huge batch breeders, and something like 80% of them are infected with a gnarly bacterial pneumonia they never get over. They're also total cancer factories. Don't get me wrong, I've bought plenty of rats from pet stores over the years. (The most memorable was a baby agouti rat some dumbass had tossed in to feed a shedding snake. They were huddled miserably on either side of the tank, trying to stay as far away from each other as possible.)

ANYWAY.

Literally every rat I ever bought from a pet store died prematurely of pneumonia or cancer. The only rats I've ever had who lived longer than 3 were from a private breeder in Portland. They were sisters, and they actually died of old age at 4 and 4 1/2.

Contact your local fancy rat society for info. (I'll bet there is such an organization in your area.)

When I get a new rat someday, I'm going to buy from these people: http://www.worldofrats.com/ROUSIndex.html

How could any fangirl resist?

[weezlgrrrl]

What REALLY creeps me out is that my mom used to keep rats in the late 1950's, and she told me they were bigger, healthier, and lived longer than any pet-quality rat you can find today. And these were lab rats! Either the world has become so polluted that rats get sick if you look at them crosseyed, or they're so overbred that they're prone to cancer and other illnesses. And if THAT'S the case, it really makes you wonder about any research people do with them. If they get cancer when they're kept in a loving home and fed the best food and cleanest water, how can you possibly trust a cancer study on rats in a lab?

Sorry. Ranting. And hey, if you want to save one of the lil' critters from the pet store, more power to ya. Heaven knows I would never discourage anyone from giving an animal a good home. I just wanted to put in a word of warning that it may not have a long life expectancy.