Well, here we go again with the hysteria -

Luckies, you can't be serious about this quarantine business when it comes to 2 pet store rats in a single family home. They have already been exposed to the air in the fairly crappy pet store they came from, so they probably have any number of diseases already. Kind of like shutting the barn door after the horses get out. Fred and Oscar came from the same pet store, we kept them separated the same way, in the same room but in a different aquarium, and they have not infected or killed any other rats in the house - in fact, they were the lucky ones who DIDN'T get the pneumonia that the girls did. We don't have a heated attached garage; in a Wisconsin winter that would be nearly impossible as well as ridiculous - the garage would have to be insulated as thickly as the house to stay at 70 degrees, and the heating bills would be astronomical, unless you're suggesting they could get by in a 50 degree room. We'd just be exposing them to all the chemicals in the garage, as well as infected air from all the neighborhood squirrels and chipmunks, not to mention lowering their resistance to illnesses by exposing them to a drafty, stinky garage.

Oddly enough, we don't have friends who enjoy rats, especially to the point that they would be willing to take them on in their home. If we had friends who had rats, why would they want to take in our possibly diseased rats to breathe all over their rats, anyway? They're OUR pets, so they will live in OUR house, infested as it may be. We're not running a world-class breeding facility, just enjoying the company of a few pets that we wanted to rescue from a cruddy pet store.