Phoebe Blue

Here's the rat I hope to adopt. Her name is already Phoebe so I'll call her Phoebe Blue. I hope she and I will become great friends. I've been researching rats when I have a bit of free time, and there's tons of Youtube videos about how to care for them and how to train them to do cute tricks.

They are like adorable, really tiny dogs.

I feel sort of bad for Phoebe, because her owners had to return her to the breeder when they moved to a pet-intolerant home. It must be hard to give up your house and your companions. And adult rats don't get adopted very well. Anyone who wants a pet is looking for a baby or one that's only a few months old.

She's living at the only small hobby breeder in all of Southern California who has baby rats available now. After the heartbreaking disaster where my daughter's birthday present rat died overnight with no warning, and still no apparent reason, I really want to get healthier stock for our next pets. And I want to get her a rat (which has now become possibly 3-4 rats- yikes) as soon as possible. So even though this breeder is 100 miles away, I think we will be making the trip. I just have to convince my husband that we need to drive 200 miles to get more animals to be responsible for. He just grunts and says stuff like, "You know we have guinea pigs already living in our kitchen right?" And I say, "It's not the kitchen. It's the family room. Besides rats are different."

And then he says, "I know. Let's go to the rescue shelter and 'just look' at the dogs." Which is a different story. We were supposed to just be browsing but then our dog Emily was slated to be put down that same day. So we HAD to take her home right away. There was no time to consider it. Otherwise we would have been totally JUST looking. In fact, now a lot of times if I ask him if he fed the dogs, he'll say, "I went to the garage and just looked at them." Ha Ha. He's sooooo funny.

Anyway, I'm going to let my daughter pick out the two babies that she wants to be her special pets. I'll email the breeder and confirm. I need to order a special top-of-the-line cage off the internet and get it delivered. And then we're good to go and pick them up!!

And then Phoebe will be mine. I hope I can train her to run around while I write!