Well......my first reaction to rats was NO!! ABSOLUTELY NOT!! DISGUSTING!! Not only that, but I just didn't want to add more pets to the household in general. However, she showered me mercilessly with rat information and pleadings, and eventually we ended up at a pet store where she had me look at and hold the rats. When I first saw the rats, the tails just grossed me out (and still do, a little bit), but as soon as I saw one little ratty taking a lovely head bath, I was hooked. Any self-cleaning animal is OK in my book. Then I got to hold the little stinker, and I thought he was very soft and sweet. It helps that we used to have a guinea pig, and as a child I had pet mice, so I am pretty fond of rodents in general. So.... we started out with 2 girls, each of whom had litters immediately (we had no idea they were in the family way when we got them). We kept one girl from each litter, and then a few months ago we were suckered into buying another girl ratty from the pet store down the street. Turns out that SHE was also in the family way, so we experience the miracle of ratbirth once again. We kept the only girl from that litter, and we now have all non-pregnant girl ratties (finally!)

Wow, that kind of got off the topic of welcome to Pet Talk - but I bet SallysSlave62 can relate to some of this!