# How did you get your Ratties?



## RattieLover1331 (May 21, 2013)

~~Sorry if this is in the wrong thread.~~

So, I thought it would be fun if we told stories about how we got our little ratties!

You can post pictures of them, and tell how you got your ratums 

My Story:
I went to my friend's house one day. She had two rats that she got from a pet store. One of them was pregnant, and had a litter of 5. They were about 3 weeks old when I saw them. They were looking for homes when the rats were old enough. My mom said we'd take one! I got to pick out which one.
I chose the little runt of the litter. He was the only light colored one. He was a momma's boy too! Well, after I went home, I started doing research on ratties. I found that it would be best to have two. So I asked my friend, and she said I could have two. They didn't know the genders yet (They were new to this sort of thing) And so they would wait to see what the tan colored gender would be, and pair it with the same gender. Well, when they could tell the genders, the little one I picked out was a boy! And his brother which is brown, was the only other boy of the litter! I got the two little boys. I named the tan one Cookie Dough, but Cookie for short, and the brown one Nike.


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## RosesRufflesandRats (Apr 25, 2013)

What a sweet story!


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## RattieLover1331 (May 21, 2013)

RosesRufflesandRats said:


> What a sweet story!


Why thank you c:


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## alexn (Sep 30, 2012)

My first two were pretty standard; My wife and I had wanted rats for ages, and once we thought we could afford it, we blagged a lift from our neighbour and went down to the pet shop 

Poppy was slightly different, however from the same store. By this point I was working there, and had to do a week in the store before moving to my current one. Upon arriving, I went straight to the rat cage, where I saw Poppy. She was all on her own, nervous, and spent most of her time asleep high up in her hammock. I asked how long she'd been on her own, and got varying responses, but most were around the month mark. I decided that, if she wasn't sold by the end of the week, I'd take her home with me. 

The next day, I brought her home


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## RosesRufflesandRats (Apr 25, 2013)

alexn said:


> My first two were pretty standard; My wife and I had wanted rats for ages, and once we thought we could afford it, we blagged a lift from our neighbour and went down to the pet shop
> 
> Poppy was slightly different, however from the same store. By this point I was working there, and had to do a week in the store before moving to my current one. Upon arriving, I went straight to the rat cage, where I saw Poppy. She was all on her own, nervous, and spent most of her time asleep high up in her hammock. I asked how long she'd been on her own, and got varying responses, but most were around the month mark. I decided that, if she wasn't sold by the end of the week, I'd take her home with me.
> 
> The next day, I brought her home


Great story about Poppy! Glad she got a good home, poor thing!


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## alexn (Sep 30, 2012)

RosesRufflesandRats said:


> Great story about Poppy! Glad she got a good home, poor thing!


Yeah, she was very nervous for ages, but soon came around, and she was very quickly trying to prove herself... even if it didn't always work  (She used to underestimate her strength a lot, and many a time I had to jump from the sofa to catch her as she couldn't pull herself up onto the rope bridge).

This was about a week after we introduced her, and made me so incredibly happy - I knew she hadn't had a friend to cuddle with for a long time:


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## Ratfinx (Feb 19, 2013)

Well I met my boyfriends sisters rats at Christmas and fell in love by February my boyfriend said I could get one so I went to the pet shop and saw blue I was so desperate for him that I got everything that day I went back to get him and while filling his forms in I was watching mumble looking at blue from inside the cage they were both in, in the end I couldn't leave mumble on his own and got them both, best choice I have ever made! I love my boys more then anything, I can't imagine not having mumble or blue! 


Sent from Petguide.com Free App


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## Rumy91989 (Dec 31, 2012)

Oooh I love threads like this! It's so fun to read people's stories!

Well, I have 8... but I'll try to keep it short. haha. 

My fiance wanted rats for a very, very long time but I was never sold on it. Every time we went to the pet store they only had males who were always sleeping and I was turned off by their male parts. I have a pretty large collection of fish and someone on CL had a post for some cool supplies so I went over to her house to get them. On her front porch (this is August, by the way, so it's kind of a miracle they were still alive. August in TN is brutal) was a smallish rat cage with two gals in it, one a big (and I mean BIG) fat black berkshire who came right up to the side of the cage and grabbed at my finger with her little hand, and one super tiny but full grown black self gal who was watching us but didn't come to greet us. I asked the lady about them who said she was trying to get rid of them, and I was so in love with the big berkie that I said we'd take them. We blew way too much money at the pet store on our way home (I affectionaltely call this story, "How a $10 batch of fish supplies cost me $230). They became Euphie and Lulu.

Later that week I went with my roommate to PetCo to pick up some more supplies and we saw a PEW girl alone in a cage in the adoption center. They said she'd been there for a while so they were willing to adopt her out for free. He named her Yuki and she got on with Euphie and Lulu like they'd been raised together. 

A few months later we were having real issues with our cage so we separated our girls into to small cages while we worked on it. That left Yuki alone which made us sad, so we went to the store to find a few toys to keep her happy and saw Nirvash, a gorgeous little amber girl who was still very much a baby.

Three weeks after that my friend called me, panicked, because she'd bought a live feeder for her snake and it wasn't going well at all. I offered to adopt him from her, and that same day he got a friend named George. I had Fred and George for a month before my roommate went to get two baby males from CL who turned out to be girls--Luna and Ashe. I ended up adopting Luna and Ashe (Ashe was only three weeks and the tiniest thing ever at the time) and she adopted Fred and Geroge from me so we could both have single sex mischeifs.

Fast forward a few months and I'm once again buying random supplies from someone on CL when I see a tiny, tiny baby rat in a hamster cage and she tells me it was a rejected feeder. I fell in love with her and brought her home, but she was only with me for three weeks before a heart defect took her. 

A week after that I saw an ad for two retired breeders, a blue rex dumbo and a siamese rex dumbo, and I just had to have them. So Cloud and Totoro came home with me and now I'm done adopting rats for a while because eight is quite enough! Haha.


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## ratclaws (Nov 11, 2012)

Well, my girlfriend had two rats and I realised what amazing pets they make, especially when seeing her girl Bella (she's a very special rat with a true personality, completely loves people, gives kisses and loves strokes at any time). So I got some few months later (At the end of September) and then three more later on, never looked back since.


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## cassidyrose (May 5, 2013)

I got my little man, Mandy Patinkin, from an accidental litter about 45 minutes away. He was just a tiny baby at that time. He had two adorable brothers, but Mandy was the runt, and he was such a licky baby (he still is!) and he's the rat I chose that day.

I just rescued a new rat a couple days ago. He was at a shelter, in a cage with a duo who wanted nothing to do with him. They had him penned in the litterbox! I watched for almost 45 minutes, trying to have the willpower to get out of that place without a new rat. I lost. He's a timid little guy, but he's napping in my lap right now. It's so much fun to fall in love with a new fuzzbutt!


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## TygerLynx (Apr 4, 2013)

A friend of mine had the two rats at school in her dorm room at college. When she almost got caught with them (they aren't allowed in our dorms) she took them home, but I think her parents wanted her to find a new home for them. She also realized they needed a bigger cage (poor things were in a 10 gallon aquarium filled with pine shavings, a water bottle, and food dish...) and didn't want to buy it. She knew I was planning to get rats after I graduated (I just graduated this month) so she let me take them! Got them a bigger cage, different bedding, and lots of toys!


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## Minky (Apr 4, 2013)

I love this thread, by the way  

I hadn't had a rat in many years, but I was wanting one for a long time. I saw Darla, a young, faun hooded rat at the pet store (alone) and asked to hold her, and decided she was great and that I absolutely had to have her. A few weeks later I went back and got a friend for her - Minky - who was the only rat they had at the time. Minky was a mink Berkshire dumbo rat with a very silly and awesome personality. Only 15 months later, Darla developed a mammary tumor, and poor Minky got a pituitary tumor and had to be euthanized. I missed Minky so much, but didn't want another pet store rat. 

I ended up driving 4 hours to a shelter in another town, where they had dozens of rats that had been confiscated from an animal hoarder. The shelter was dirty and the rats were in tiny, dirty cages with nothing to do. The first one to come up to me was a tiny white dumbo rat with black eyes. Her cagemate, a fragile-looking blue masked rat, approached me with great caution, and they both gently sniffed and nibbled my hand. I'd never seen such gentle, sweet rats. I took them both, plus the Siamese rat that was alone in the cage next to them. I named them Baby (the little one), Petunia (the blue masked one) and Nina (the Siamese). 

Well, they are AWESOME. These shelter rats are the best I've ever had - super gentle and very loving. Except for a scar on Petunia's tail, it's impossible to tell they were from a hoarding situation - a testament to the resilience of rats. Being able to provide these girls with a good home has been an immensely rewarding experience.


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## PandaBruja (Feb 10, 2013)

Well I dont really have any great stories, all of the rats ive ever had either came from a feeder bin or Craigslist,
but I sure am enjoying this thread! Great stories


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## Rumy91989 (Dec 31, 2012)

PandaBruja said:


> Well I dont really have any great stories, all of the rats ive ever had either came from a feeder bin or Craigslist,
> but I sure am enjoying this thread! Great stories


Those rats have stories too!


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## Patientzero (Jan 12, 2012)

I got my first rat Patient Zero on a whim. I used to own reptiles but I was really wanting to have a small fuzzy friend, I was looking at guinea pigs, chinchillas and ferrets and then I read about how great rats were, I wasn't sure at first, I had only met one rat before and he wasn't a friendly rat, but after youtubing videos I knew they were for me, so then I got Zero from a local breeder when she was 8 months old, she was a beautiful dark chocolate coloured berkshire, and she was the best rat to be introduced to as a pet. She had the most amazing personality, so funny, adventurous and cuddley. She sadly died at 1.5 years old from mammary tumors. She died a few days before she was scheduled for surgery because they progressed so rapidly.


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## RattieLover1331 (May 21, 2013)

Patientzero said:


> I got my first rat Patient Zero on a whim. I used to own reptiles but I was really wanting to have a small fuzzy friend, I was looking at guinea pigs, chinchillas and ferrets and then I read about how great rats were, I wasn't sure at first, I had only met one rat before and he wasn't a friendly rat, but after youtubing videos I knew they were for me, so then I got Zero from a local breeder when she was 8 months old, she was a beautiful dark chocolate coloured berkshire, and she was the best rat to be introduced to as a pet. She had the most amazing personality, so funny, adventurous and cuddley. She sadly died at 1.5 years old from mammary tumors. She died a few days before she was scheduled for surgery because they progressed so rapidly.






Awww! What cutie♥♥

Your story is so sweet too


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## Lightning (May 24, 2013)

My story is blah lol. My first rattie girl came from a pet store, I suspect a feeder rat as he said they were never handled at all and were all white and thrown together in small aquariums. My other rat came from someone I know, she was trying to find a home for her two rats that she adopted from her college (from lab experiments, if they weren't adopted they were to be put down) Sadly one of them already is gone so now I have two female rats, the one from the pet store I do believe is pregnant...so more to come.


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## Kaiser (May 21, 2013)

Aw I love everyone's stories. They are so unique. 

My story is rather short but I adopted my six girls from craigslist recently. I sent email after email to the owner. I wanted to make sure and make a good impression. Luckily, being genuine helped as they allowed me to adopt the girls. I actually did not have no clue what they looked like but ironically they all look very similar. Sometimes I confuse them but I still say "Hello Girls" in a high pitched voice. They absolutely go crazy and get happy when they hear and see me. They are already spoiled. As for Apollo and Loki I had them before the girls. They were my cousins rats but her mom would not let her keep them so they have been staying with me. Eventually they ended up being mine as I am the primary caregiver. My boys both came from two different feeder bins at a pet store. They were very unsocialized when we got them, but slowly warmed up to us. Anyway, the reason why I decided to be a rat mommy is because my doctor suggested I get a therapy pet for my ptsd and bi polar disorder. I remembered having rats when I was a child, so I decided they would be a perfect fit for me.


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