Reggie

This is our pet rat Reggie. Yes, he is a rat and no, he is not like the rats that you see in films running around sewers and spreading disease, lol. He is a domestic rat, which means that he is tame and does not carry any diseases. Rats have been domesticated since the late 19th century and make great pets. Rats are sociable, intelligent animals and can be trained to use a litter box, come when called, and perform a variety of tricks..(this is according to Wikipedia.org)

I got the idea of buying a rat after moving into our apartment. Unfortunately our landlord wouldn’t allow us to have dogs or cats, which I can understand. But I’ve always had pets, mainly dogs, since the day I was born so found that I missed having them around. I remembered seeing a programme about pet rats on a TV show called “The Late Late Show” on RTE1 and thought they were cute, so set my heart on buying one as a pet. Originally, I had bought one rat who was just five weeks old and who I called Roland (after Roland the rat, this was a puppet from a 1980’s morning show on BBC) hehe...Anyway, he wasn’t on his own for long and two weeks later I bought one of his brothers and called him Smurf (there are only so many popular rat names so ran out of names after Roland!)lol, but I thought Smurf sounded cute so that was the name I chose. Anyway, after about 6 months both Roland and Smurf accidentally got poisoned. We had used an air freshener in our room, not realising that some of it had got on their food and poisoned them! It was very sad, but after waiting another couple of months, I decided to buy a new one and named him after his pet food!haha...

I have to say, he is a great pet. We spent a lot more time with Reggie so he can come when he’s called and loves to snuggle up with me on the sofa. He’s also very mischievous and when we let him out of his cage and turn our back on him he usually disappears behind the sofa or runs into the kitchen to look for crumbs!!:) He’s great fun though and because he eats everything he comes in handy when it comes to getting rid of leftovers.

People have a lot of misconceptions about domestic rats and just assume that they are like wild rats, but they’re really not. They never bite or become vicious like wild rats and love having their bellies and ears scratched!!
The downside of course is the fact that they generally only live for about two years..very short I know, but this is due to the fact that a lot of their ancestors were used in labs and were given cancer and other forms of disease. Even so, if you really look after your pet rat and get them checked up regularly there is no reason why they can’t live longer. There have been some rats that have lived to 7 and onwards so it is possible.

Our little Reggie should hopefully have a new companion soon. He’s been on his own for a few months now and we feel it’s only fair that he has some Company when we’re not here. If he had his choice we would be getting a Mrs Reggie but unfortunately, it’s very expensive to get female rats spayed and it also can cause complications which can lead to death so we’ll be looking for another male.
Well, I hope this changes some misconceptions about rats, and I would definitely recommend them as a pet, just look at how cute Reggie is!!;)