Rats!

What rats do you have at the moment?

My current three are:

Cocoa - a dark chocolate brown rat with white socks. She is the alpha
Hoodie - A hooded rat, dark brown hood and white - the deputy
Judy - Hoodie's gentle sister.

Cocoa
Cocoa is a bit older than the other two, coming from a previous threesome and is a slow, panther-like beast of girl. She has very deliberate movements and when I first tried to handle her I sensed her intense suspicion. She will take no nonsense from anyone!

However as time has gone on she has rather taken to me and is a bit friendlier with me. Except when food is pushed through the bars - she grabs it like lightning and if I am not careful my fingers would go with it! She only ever bothers with her deputy, Judy she ignores!

Hoodie
Hoodie is fearless and feisty but also very friendly. She constantly jockeys for the top dog position with Cocoa, and it is comical to find the two, up on their hind legs staring at each other daring the other to make the first move. Sometimes their squabbles sound rather frightening as they rumble around the cage upsetting everything and squeaking and shrieking, but they never seem to mark each other. Hoodie is easily the most human-friendly, as soon as the cage door opens she is out onto your hand!

Judy
Judy is the quiet one. She spends most of her day on the upper spar gazing round at the world and watching her two superiors with what would appear to be a sigh. She is remarkably gentle when handled and would not harm anything. She is also a little wary of being handled, but still remarkably gentle, despite her nervous disposition.

Together
All three, despite the top dog squabbles, get on perfectly. The two hooded rats tend to spend most of their time jumping up onto the bars of the cage whenever they detect human presence, and Cocoa will deign to rouse herself to see what the commotion is all about.

Although they spend most of the time together passively, the interaction is most common between Cocoa and Hoodie, although at times they will both give poor Judes a bit of un-necessary correction.

One of the most peculiar behaviours they display is when one of them, no matter who, is taken out of the cage for some human interaction, and when replaced back, the other two will sniff over the 'preferred one' and proceed to slap her about a bit. It doesn't matter if it's the alpha, the depute or the lower rank, they all react this way. Never seen this before in previous colonies.

Like humans, all rats are individuals, they have their own quirks and foibles - which is why they make for such fascinating pets.

Also, they are about the best pets children can have, providing an insight into the minds of animals and teaching about discipline and social interaction at the same time!