| My Rats (and Me) |
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| Click on the link below to go to the photo page: Rat Photo Page |
| My previous rats include Hagen, the father of Abby's first litter. He is a cinammon self with ruby or dark red eyes. He was our first rat. he was bought on February 23rd from an Auckland pet shop, at what we suspect was the age of only 4 weeks. During the week he lived in a remodelled plastic tub at my friends house, and on the weekends he lounged about in his second hand birdcage in my living room. Excitable and highly active as a youngster, his favourite past time was climbing down any top he could find. He has now grown in to a wonderful, beautiful buck, and lives with a new family now where he is king of the castle. I would consider him to be the most docile rat I have ever encountered. |
| Abby (Abigail) is my second rat, bought to be a companion to Hagen. Because they were always fighting, we decided that I would keep Abby, and my friend would keep Hagen (who now had a huge cage my friend had made himself). She was about 6 weeks when we got her, at the beginning of March, and a little bigger than Hagen. She is a hooded rat, dark in colour, but not truly black like Pixie. She does however have a patch on one of her hips, which at a glance makes her distinguishable from Pixie. She is a very lovely mother, having given birth to 8 babies on Decmeber 24th 2002. As a baby she was highly active and very curious, and loved to snuggle up in pockets to sleep. My fondest memories of Abby are her whisperings in my ear, and her many kisses. I miss her lots, but my mum is taking good care of her while i'm away. |
| Pixie (Phoenix) is my third rat, who I feel in love with at the pet shop. Her sister had been sold, and she was all alone. We got her in late April from memory, and she was even smaller than Abby was when we got her, so we think Pixie must have been quite young. We also think that she is either a runt, or stunted in her growth (possibly weaned too early) as she has never grown to full size. She is more active than Abby, even now. She could almost be described as hyperactive, as she is always on the go. In the beginning Abby was constantly fending her off, because she wasn't interested in all Pixie's playfulness, but now they seem to be good friends (except the occasional time when Abby gets sick of playing or they both want they same thing...). My fondest memories of Pixie are her cute little face, her tendency as a baby for snuggling into bras and the time she fell asleep for several hours in my jacket pocket the day we brought her home (i nearly forgot she was in there too!). She fit absolutely perfectly in to that pocket, for a week or two at least... |
| The newest addition to the permanent family is Mini-Me, Abby's daughter. According to my mum she looks just like Abby (except without the hip patch) and is absolutely adorable. I plan on keeping her for breeding later on and she seems to be the best of the litter in both markings and personality. She is a little bit under two months old at the moment, and I simply can't WAIT to see her when I get back home! |
| Other Rats that I wouldn't mind is a rat that looks like Kate's Merlin (from the NZRC group). I'm going to be getting a lavender doe, either self or berkshire, from Heather. I also wouldn't mind breeding Hagen again with a lavender doe, to try and work out what he is exactly. We still aren't sure.what he is. As far as breeding rats is concerned, personality and health, but because Hagen is healthy and has such a wonderful personality AND colour, I plan on breeding from him some more. I also hope to maybe breed from his sons and the daughter, Mini-Me, his and Abby's daughter. I plan on breeding Mini-Me with either a cinammon self or a mink berkshire. |
| HAGEN |
| ABBY |
| PIXIE |
| MINI-ME (Daughter of Abby and Hagen) |
| OTHER RATS |