Novatella Rattery

About Me

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First off I'm Kirra or Raa (my friend's cockatoo can't say Kirra properly and it has kinda stuck)

My love of rats began at 3 years old when, after begging for a puppy for months, my mother took me to the local family-owned pet store. The owner brought out a handful of pinkies and said I could have whichever one I wanted. I picked  a beautiful cinnamon self whom I called Flower. Sadly Flower was only with us for 18 months.

Next came Rosie, a black hooded who to this day remains one of my two favourite girls. She was a rescue from a feeder breeder  and came to us as a terrified little fuzz but mellowed into a beautiful outgoing girl and lived to the ripe old age of six. After she left us it was almost a year before we opened our hearts to another girl.

Next came Heidi and Climbey, a pair of very cute blue hoodeds (when blues were just starting out). All was fine for a few weeks until one night Heidi attacked my aunt viciously (bit through her lip, tore out her piercing and then attached herself to her finger). She then curled up and died quite suddenly. Her sister died suddenly a few days later; we think they had brain tumors...

It was nearly 5 years before we opened our hearts to another rat (we were all a little scared from our last experience). I was in a horrible chain store looking at the ratties and there were two girls in the female tub who were much older than I would have expected. I asked one of the girls about them and she told me that they had been there for 2 months and if they weren't gone by the end of the week her boss was going to feed them to his snake. Of course I couldn't leave them there so they came home with me the next day. Hayze PEW sadly passed away at only a year old due to unknown causes. Peper (cinnamon hooded)  unfortunately had asthma and spent alot of her first 6 months with me at the vet getting allergy shots. Sadly she passed over 11/9/2010. She would have been 4 in January.

When Hayze left us we adopted another three ratties (Popcorn- agouti hooded, Hope- agouti hooded and Rain- black berkshire) who Peper accepted quickly, letting them into her hammock the first night and taking on a mothering role to Rain once the other 2 were moved into a separate cage. Sadly Rain was never a very healthy rat and she was with us barely 6 months before a respiratory infection took her from us.

Just before her passing I rescued Bella (black mm hooded) from someone at work, she came to me about 1/2 the size of my other girls who were a month younger than her and very underweight. I originally thought she was a miniature because of her size but after a few months of TLC she has certainly caught up! She is a nice little rattie apart from one incident in which she bit me- during the first few days I had her. She's still with me and is living with Popcorn and Hope.