BandMan2K wrote:
Well that piqued my interest. If I can get rid of the two cats I have here, I might think of that.
Rats really are great. I have only been bitten a couple of times in the decade and a half of owning them. The first time was when I had one in my lap and my cat jumped up on the couch next to me. The rat squeeled at the top of his little lungs and leaped further straight up than I could have imagined. When I tried to catch the thing on the way down, he bit the hell out of me. The second time was when an old female got a little batshit in her old age. She was a sweetie outside of the cage but treated your hand like it was a snake if you were dumb enough to stick your hand in there. I invested in gloves real quick.
Cats, on the other hand, have been the source of nothing but suffering for my family. I have been clawed, bitten, and subjected to every possible bodily fluid by them. My mother was bitten by the cat of one of her friends not two year ago and developed an infection between the tendons of her hand that required some serious medical intervention. She still doesn't have full use of all the fingers.
You can keep a rat in a pocket when it is small, have them ride (quite safely) on your shoulder, or inside your shirt if you have an undershirt on. I found its perfectly safe to let them run around the bathroom as long as you keep your toilet lid down and put the bath towels where they can't chew on them.
The trick is to get them as young as possible and, if you can manage it, know their mother. Some rat mothers will let you put your hand right into their pile of pups as long as she knows you. If you can't manage that, aim for the period around weening where they are in the socalled 'popcorn' stage. They are constantly poinging around, wrestling with their siblings like puppies, or hanging on the ceiling of wire cages. And you get five or six trying to run on a wheel... in both directions.
You have to try rats. They are the perfect, if short lived, pets.
_________________
actor_au wrote:
Labrat's friends can't run away, as they are only the skins of the people he's drowned in his own semen, carefully stitched together and stuffed with cooking chocolate.