Rats a popular choice as small, personable pets

History and Hollywood cast them as vermin responsible for plagues, famine and famous movie lines like “You dirty rat!” But to a small group of fans, the rat is a charming pocket companion as loyal as a dog and cleaner than a cat.
Nearly 60 percent of American households have pets, according to
an Associated Press-Petside.com poll. About 74 percent of pet
owners polled in October said they had dogs, 47 percent said they
had cats and 3 percent said they had a gerbil, hamster, mouse or
rat.
“To own a rat is to know that forever your heart will walk
outside your body on four little feet,” said Dale Burkhart, 66, of
Claremont. She’s the vice president for the Riverside-based
American Fancy Rat and Mouse Association.
Burkhart’s nickname is Hattie McRattie and she runs the House
Mouse Cafe at club events. Because of her arthritis, she no longer
keeps rats but remains devoted, recalling how her fiance used to
come over to visit her and her rats.
“They would groom his hair, groom his eyebrows and eyelashes.
They are always grooming each other. That’s how they show respect and affection,” Burkhart said. “We become the alpha rat and they groom us.”
The average life span of a rat is two to three years, said
Debbie Ducommun of Chico. She’s an author and international rat
expert known as “The Rat Lady” and was a consultant on the movie
“Ratatouille.”
Short lives is the “down side of dear little ratties,” said Cathleen Schneider-Russell, a member of the association from Chino
Hills. “You have to enjoy every precious moment.”
Most fans will keep a small colony of rats, said Stephen
Zawistowski, executive vice president and science adviser for ASPCA national programs based in New York. That doesn’t mean one rat can’t be very special, said Jenna R. Lillibridge, director of Any Rat Rescue in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Her rat Aries is blind and the most affectionate rat she has
ever had. “She loves people. She sleeps with me, sleeps on me. She will drape herself over my ankle or side or snuggle up to my
neck,” said Lillibridge, whose organization was founded in 2004
and has placed 700 rats since.
Karen Robbins of Winnetka, near Los Angeles, is rat fancier
association’s president, a job she’s held off and on since 1983.
She got her first rat in 1974 because her sister had a snake and
bought three baby rats to feed it. The snake ate two but Robbins
saved the third. She took it back to its mother at the pet store
and when it was ready, she adopted it and a sibling, both females.
A kid down the street found out she had rats and gave her two he
couldn’t keep, a male and a female and she became a breeder.
Robbins has 43 rats she is now breeding separately for marking,
color and coat — but all of them for personality.
Companion rats are more popular in California than any other
state, Ducommun said. Weirdness is part of it, she said, but
ferrets, gerbils, hedgehogs and other exotic pets are banned in
California, so rats don’t have as many options to compete with.
Rats have to be smart because they’re a prey species as well as
a predator species, Ducommun said. They also have one of the most robust digestive systems in the world — a reason they’re so
destructive and hard to destroy as pests.
The average pet rat is 6 inches long, has a 6-inch tail and
weighs less than a pound. In the wild, females breed year round and can have 20 or more babies at a time. In the wild, rats naturally
become aggressive and learn to bite as they compete with other rats for food.