What a pack of cuties! May you all have many happy years together.
I know, I know. Our rat was more a kidnapping then an adoption, though. Our niece had a snake that she fed live mice. On a visit, my wife saw the snake curled up taking a snake snooze, apparently full, with one leftover “mouse” cowering in the corner. My wife said “no f***ing way” and rescued her.
Well, turns out the little girl was actually a fancy rat, the most common pet breed. We researched and it said they’re highly social, so we bought her a friend.
We knew they’d have short lives but, man, did we love them. So sweet. Paid for an expensive operation for one to have a tumor removed, even though we knew it would only buy a short time. So, yeah, consider their life spans if you’re considering them as pets. You will get attached.
Anyway, I don’t regret it even a little bit.
Side note - we are a snake/lizard household in addition to the late-addition cats. While I know there are people who swear it’s better, more “natural” we never feed our snakes live rodents. It’s horrible for the rodents (although I won’t claim much of a moral high ground, I eat meat after all), and it’s possible for the snake/lizard to be hurt by a rat fighting for it’s life.
That’s also why I didn’t comment much on the cute rats, I have the ghosts of many hundreds of dead mice and rats, plus countless crickets and other insects on my hands!
Yin and Yang (not their real names).
Lucas in Full Send!
Can’t see much of him, but I just unboxed some Amazon stuff with inevitable results:
I lurves Monkey. He looks like a house panther.
We didn’t plan to have a big cat and an itty bitty cat, but stuff happens. At least they are happy.
My gf has been training Kizzy in agility for a few years now. She’s been competing this year and has moved up from Novice, so her competition has gotten tougher.
Still, she competed today and brought home more ribbons. She was entered in three events today. The first event was a non-qualifying score. The second and third event she took two first place ribbons!!!
She was exceptionally fine in open jumping. Two dogs had faster times, but they were penalized for knocking down fences. Kizzy’s run was flawless.
But wait, there’s more. My gf decided to enter Simi in his first ever event. He’s a total novice. One event, one blue ribbon (the other novices weren’t all that). Simi was so happy with all the fuss we made over his first place. 
A long day, but worth it.
What beautiful good dogs. 
Thanks, they were so good! Simi was used to running a course at school and it was no big deal. Running yesterday he got applause and you could tell he liked it!
Good dogs! I bet they both loved it.
Yeah, dogs, too. I’m happy that the dachshund rescue we’ve used is very good about not splitting up bonded pairs (or triples!).
Looks like he’s making crop circles in the grass.
Yes, the rescue I get my cat adoptions from tries very hard to keep bonded pairs together. I in fact adopted two pairs of oldies over the last few years – a brother and sister pair, and then a brother pair; when I say old, I mean mid/late teens, since that’s the age range I make it a point to adopt now if at all possible.
The latest two were both strays classified as senior even though they were given an arbitrary age of ten. I suspect they do that for any older stray when they don’t know its actual age. Anyway, whatever their true ages, Freddie Mercury and Bruiser are thriving despite age-related issues.
Kizzy and Simi are so well behaved. Rocco, on the other hand shredded an entire pack of post-it notes.
It’s because they’re canary yellow
We have a large flight cage with 5 budgerigars. They’re his roommates.
I found a few pics of our old family cat , Tig
We lived in an old house in the countryside and had been without cats for a few months. One night my mother saw a rodent run across the end of their bed and the next day Tig arrived from the animal rescue.
Never saw a living or whole rodent again.
Oddly never climbed trees or the curtains and we rarely found birds.
Here she is likely contemplating murder.
Tig was a small cat and we didn’t know how old she was when we got her , in the picture there she is at least 14 and lived another 3 years.
She was very affectionate and sat on laps or beds purring away, but the “give me a belly rub’ was just an invite to an instant clawing and rear foot battering, and you would never leave your feet out of the covers at night .
When we moved to a suburban area she we join walking the dogs , running ahead under parked cars to check things out and see what needed sorting out.
How many times did I fall for that ‘give me a belly rub’ look
What an excellent cat.