Deserted Rats!

Backblipped on 18th April 2012

Not to be confused with Desert Rats, these are simply rats at a show and all the people seem to have vanished!

There are, of course, only 2 reasons why I would get up early on a Saturday morning: 1. the house is burning down and 2. there's a rat show!

Fortunately for the house, it was rat show day, and there WERE people there! I prepared THREE rat boxes (I was collecting rats as well as showing), got the boys into theirs, collected cucumber from the fridge, packed the show tanks, and headed off in a Bedfordy direction!

On arrival it was setting up, meeting friends, and then preparing IV-XL, Victor, and Elijah who I was showing. Once they'd been benched (who knew there was a phrase "benching rats"), I met up with a lovely lady who was supplying me with two gorgeous agouti (brown with "highlights", the same sort of colour as a wild rat) girls (one smooth and one rex - i.e. one with straight hair and one with curly hair). Cadenza and Sinfonia are absolutely gorgeous little ladies, who have now moved into Alcatraz.

The reason that there weren't many people around when I took this picture is that there were lots of people at a "judging" course. I wasn't there, since it hasn't yet occurred me to be a judge at rat shows (although I'm sure it will sometime), so I sat with a group of friends and we chatted and played with my new girls and also a superstar rat called Wisher!

I also met one of Victor's sisters, who's really like him. She's stayed with the humans of Victor and IV-XL's dad, who was called IV-XII and tragically died earlier in the month of a heart attack, aged only 18 months. He was a fine rat, and was the reason I got IV-XL and Victor - I deliberately sought out some of his offspring.

And today IV-XL and Victor followed in their dad's esteemed pawprints, IV-XL winning best British Blue and Victor winning best Black. Elijah didn't win anything, but the judge said he was a friendly chap and he certainly enjoyed meeting people (although he was deeply unkeen on being washed - he prefers to be a bit grubby)!

After the show I headed off with Lisa, who was rehoming a couple of hairless special needs boys to me (they couldn't come to the show as the NFRS (National Fancy Rat Society) doesn't allow hairless rats, precisely because of the genetic mutation they carry that causes them to have eye problems). Lisa had rescued these two from becoming snake food last summer, and had thought she'd be unable to rehome them because it would be hard to find someone who'd take on the daily eyebathing they require - however, when she heard about Py and Mede (who are doing brilliantly), she approached me.

So, Dangerous Beans and Awesome Sauce (who I call Mr Beans and Mr Sauce) were loaded into their box! I now had 3 boxes of rats - boys, girls, and nakeds!!!

Then we went round to Lyn's. Lyn's a breeder from whom I'm having some baby girls when they're ready to leave their mums. A whole group of us spent the evening playing with the babies, talking rat, talking chipmunk (Lyn's son has an escaping chipmunk), having supper, and I finally left at some very late hour!

Needless to say, I got home even later. Very very tired! The only thing I did before bath and bed was to settle all the rats into their various homes!

Great day though!