Anyone here who has pet rats?

I love them but sadly my mum don't agree so i'm not aloud to get any.

Oooh ooh ooh!! I had three rats once. I loved them!! They are so much cleaner and smarter than any other rodent I have ever had. Mice smell bad, and Guinea pigs and hamsters bite. I had the first rat for about two months, and she died of some sort of respiratory disease *sniff*, but I had the other two rats, Salt and Pepper, for three years. I was never bitten once!! And they were really smart. They came when I called, and they knew all sorts of sounds and what they meant. They were also very amusing. They liked to sit in my shoulder while I walked around the house, and they always liked getting into everything. *sniff* I miss them...
Anyway, that really sucks that your mom said no. Rats are awesome pets!!

i had a pet rat one time! it was freakin awesome! accept for the day it decided to get out of its cage and wedge itself under my bookshelf. stupid suicidal rats!

I've never had a pet rat but a friend of mine has one and it's the cutest little thing.. It's all white and it's called Psycho. It's not stupid though, it's really smart, it followed her around the house when it was out of it's cage and sat on her shoulder while she did her homework.. :D

I know what you mean! My sister's one rat got out and managed to hide itself in a plastic bag in a cupboard. We found it AFTER A YEAR! :insane: :yech: :omg:

I recently had 8, my oldest was about the size of a large kitten :D

I would love to have a pet rat! I've read very much about them and they are supposed to be very clean and very smart and sociable. They sound like so much fun; I would build mazes for it to go through and the like. My hubby says no to having them as pets though, because of the "rats carry disease" thing. Bummer.



We had a guinea pig escape once and we found it many months later in a closet, still alive (but extremely skinny, hehe ).

I used to have a rat. (I inherited the class pet at the end of the year.) She was sweet, clean, smart... She had to get two mammary tumors removed (yes, my rat had surgeries. ), and she died at three years old. It was very sad.

dawnadoggies, try getting some books on domestic rats from the library to show him. They can't carry diseases if they were raised to be pets, and the only thing they can get later on that can be passed to humans is (believe it or not) strep throat.

The only rats I had were two hamseters that smelled bad, fought all day, and managed to excape every night so I had to be very careful as to where I step and all that. I eventually took them to the pet market and sold them to a hamster merchant.

I had a pet rat named Rainbow, and loved her to death. But she died after a year from a tumor...probably caused by all the stupid things my sis and i did to her (i.e. letting her loose with the cat...not the smartest thing). And I was allowed to take my seventh grade science teacher's pet rat home for spring break (his name was Tito) and came back to school with him twice his usual size...I have a habit of spoiling my pets. The only problem was my pet Rainbow would somehow get herself out of her cage and hide in the most unsual places (to me, that is), like undeneath my sister's pillow and behind a bookshelf. And the only way we could find her was by the trail of poop she left. I miss having a rat for a pet, but my College has a "No fur, no fangs" policy.

I have four. Well, four left out of the 19 I had. I started off with 4. 3 girls one boy. Then I got babies. Passed most of them off to some homes. I have one original baby left from the first batch and then 3 more from the second batch. I think they're all about 3 years old now? Pretty geriatric if you ask me. Their age is catching up with their health so they're probably going to pass away soon.

ANYHOW, as far as keeping them is concerned, they're pretty neat, in the clean sense, especially if you have girls. Girls are more likely to play where as boys sleep and eat more. IDK how true that is for everyone though, it might just be my jerks. :eviltongu

we had a rat once

at first it was called arthur
and then we changes its name to fang

because it used to bit us everytime we took it out of the cage

haha

it was an evil creature. but now i have a ferret XD

I once had a beautiful pair of black & white rats, I have had many pets, and out of them all the rats were the only ones that DID NOT bite me! I loved um, their names were socks and Pants, as one was black with little white feet, and the other was one of those hooded rats, so he looked like he had pants on!

I've practically collected rats since about the age of 8. I only have one boy and 2 girls right now, a 3 year old black Berk named Templeton, a blue velveteen dumbo named Lilly and a black and white spotted double rex dumbo named Rhys.

Ahhh I love those Dumbo rats! It was not until a couple of months ago I discovered them in a pet store, having known nothing about them before this!

Stupid me.

lol, Tem is a pet store rat, Lilly and Rhys are both breeder rats. I figured out a LONG time ago that rats from breeders outlive pet store rats. Templeton is the oldest pet store rat I've ever had!

Rats are my favorite animals! I kept a few of them years ago, but my parents don't want me to buy any more.

I've had two rats; the first, Daniel I persuaded my mam to get around 5 years ago now. He was grey and white, with dark blue eyes. I named him after Daniel Jackson on SG-1 and, I swear, he took after his namesake (insofar as a rodent can with a human, ).

He died when he was 4-years-old, no thanks to the pet shop we bought him from. When we bought him they directed us to use these pellets that kind of looked like powdered sawdust in solidified form; they also directed other people to use the same, because the regular sawdust can cause respitory problems.

What they refrained from mentioning was the mites that can contaminate the sacks it comes in. He was already a little over 3-years-old when I spotted the mites on his fur (this was after I got a rash on my hand, and wondered where I'd got it from). Obviously we took him to the vet, and he was given an injection ( he ended up having to have a few over the last few months), as well as a solution I had to inject into his mouth every day, and a bath in this weird liquid green stuff that went like soap bubbles after it was mixed with water. They went, mostly, after quite a few months but he lost weight along the way (and Daniel loved his food. He would turn his back on someone in order to keep his food away from someone many times.) .

He ended up getting pneumonia though, when he was around 4-years-old. I was holding him as he had fits for about 3 hours, give or take a few minutes, before he died. .

We had to isolate him from Sam (not blue-eyed like his namesake, but blonde nonetheless). Fortunately he was a lot younger then, and we managed to clear him of mites a little bit after Daniel died.

The thing that's even more irritating? We warned the workers in the shop, but the ignorant cow in there didn't do anything about it - and I pointed out that three of the rats they were still looking to sell also had mites. I could see the eggs below their fur. A vets supposed to go around checking them, but he/her should be sacked because they're obviously either inefficient at their job or blind for not seeing it, and I'm not a veterinarian.

Now when I go in there to check them out, I warn anyone who wants to buy a rat, and is told to buy the pellets that we bought. Obviously the ones they keep getting a hold of are infested.

...Rant over...

i had pet rats and they tend to stink a little bit, even if you clean their tank every day!

i let my rats roam free for an hour or so each day, and when i wasnt watching ... my poor rats decided to share lunch together and eat a whole sachet of bit control pills and pain killers in my makeup bag and they died, i am the worst rat owner ever!

I had two rats and loved them. Their cage did stink, but the rats were very clean for the most part. Very gentle animals and they make great pets. Although mine both got deformities, from the inbreeding I'm sure, but still that was later on.

I had one when I was a kid but my mom let him out when he was 2 years old (she says all animals are useless and stink so they can't live together with people..) His name was Roger, he was grey and for some reason very small but oh-so-cutee (he liked sitting on the shoulder just like parrots in pirate movies do :D).. I agree that rats are great pets and I'd surely get one of those for my daughter if she asked for a pet.

I KNOW that Petshops are part of the problem(actually more than likely they are MOST of the problem) with animals that become sickly that have been bought from a petshop, but at 4 years old I'd say he lived a damn good life, especially since the average lifespan of rats is usually between 2-3 years, my rat Templeton is pushing 3.5 and honestly I'm surprised he's still going, but he's my baby and I'm glad he is!

I want a rat! They look so cute, when their nice and clean of course :D, but my parents disagree :D

I had a rat once, a big fat male named Dogwaffle. (I think I was drunk when I named him, honestly.) I LOVED that rat. He was so neat... like a tiny dog. He was only a year and half old when he died, but I did get him from the feeder cage at Petco, so I suppose it was to be expected. Poor guy.

I'm trying to convince my husband to let me get another one, but he just laughed like I wasn't serious.... *sigh*

I had the sweetest rat ever, his name was ratdude and loved to cuddle all the time. He was adorable!