August 1, 2025

Today I connected with a few people about adoptions.

I’m happy that I was able to talk with these people and help them learn more about keeping rats as pets. I enjoyed the conversations I had today. One person is going to look for a new cage for their rats, to ensure they’re using the most suitable enclosure for the number of rats they have, and may adopt two boys from me.

Another person will be adopting three girls from me on Monday, and has agreed to switch from using paper bedding to either kiln dried pine, kiln dried aspen, or hemp bedding, at my suggestion after I let them know the reasons this is recommended.

I also spoke to another person who already has boys, and would like to be a backup adopter in the event things fall through with the person who needs to find a cage upgrade.

Overall, the day went well for planning adoptions.

I also took some photos of the girls intended to be adopted out on Monday, to send to the adopter, and I cuddled the girls for a while afterward. It was nice.

Unfortunately, I had to make a hard decision to adopt out a rat we’d been planning to keep. The rat is a descendant of my middle daughter’s favourite rat, who passed away recently. She’d wanted me to keep the descendant for breeding, to hold the connection to her deceased boy. It was not easy to have to tell her that I wasn’t going to, and I’m sad because it has made her upset with me, but hard decisions come with being a parent and a breeder. That part isn’t easy at all.

Update:

I went looking through the pedigree of a couple of the rats we are keeping here, to see if they still have ties to Winston, the rat who passed. It turns out we still have some of his descendants in the rattery after all! I am hoping this information will help my daughter feel better when she reads the message I sent her about it. It’s currently 3:13 am EST as I write this, so she is sleeping.