The Rattery
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When we were married Carol had Viva her pet Gerbil and Paul had 3 pet Rats - Spot, Boogie and Bodger.

Rats make excellent pets, they are highly intelligent and not prone to sinking their teeth in to you, unlike Gerbils (guess who's writing this), their only drawback is that they have little to no bladder control so you need to have understanding friends or a badge saying "it's not me it's my Rat".
Spot was Paul's first rat (in the background) and was by far the most intelligent of all of the ones we subsequently had. She would ride around on your shoulders and when she'd had enough she would tug your clothes at the top of your arm so you'd hold out your arm for her to run down back to her cage.
Boogie (back towards you) and Bodger (facing) were 2 of Spot's offspring that we kept, unfortunately they inherited their fathers brains. Watching Baby rats play with each other is just as entertaining as watching kittens. they had a branch in their cage and some would try to run along it whilst others would grab their tails and pull them off.
Above from left to right we have Chino, Cassie and Smudge. Smudge was a male Rat who adopted Carol as his mate and would let her do anything with him, however he could tolerate no rivals and would savage Paul at any given opportunity.
This is Luke, who came from the RSPCA's Little Valley animal shelter. Luke was one of 4 rats that were apparently rescued from a field, they were named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John by the RSPCA staff. We didn't know when we first saw him but Luke had featured on Channel 4's Pet Rescue program, after we adopted him we were asked if we wanted to do a follow-up feature on him, but we decided not to.
Luke developed a skin complaint which meant we had to bathe him and use a special shampoo. He didn't like the water very much but loved being blow dried under Carol's hair dryer and then being sat in front of the gas fire which is where he is in this picture.
Above is bubbles, Carol wanted a hamster for some reason, Carol says she had a lovely nature, when upset she would turn her back on you and sulk. She loved chocolate and the resulting sugar rush would be quite amusing to watch, also amusing would be to squeeze her cheeks after she'd stored chocolate in them - she would end up with a large amount of light brown lipstick !! 
We had a brief flirtation with a house rabbit which rather than allow itself to be toilet trained would prefer to use Paul as it's latrine so that didn't last very long. We also had a Chinchilla for a couple of months, we would have had it longer if we weren't living in a flat. Trying to sleep with a hyperactive rodent running circuits round it's cage all night whilst barking continuously like a pint sized poodle can be  a little trying. We managed to find loving homes for both of these critters.