{"id":162,"date":"2007-09-05T08:14:25","date_gmt":"2007-09-05T12:14:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/?p=162"},"modified":"2015-05-22T07:18:37","modified_gmt":"2015-05-22T12:18:37","slug":"rats-as-pets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/?p=162","title":{"rendered":"Rats as Pets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img src='http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/08\/petrat.jpg' align='left' style='margin-right:10px;' alt='Rat Dressed as a Vampire' \/><a href=\"http:\/\/presurfer.blogspot.com\/\">The Presurfer<\/a> posted some photos of yawning rats from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ratballs.com\/\">Rats Are People Too<\/a>, leading me to reminisce about my pet rats.  I had several of them growing up,* and I can&#8217;t recommend them highly enough.<\/p>\n<p>Quite aside from the obvious &#8220;Oooh, spooky pet&#8221; vibe that might appeal to some of my gentle readers, rats are just wonderful pets, period.  They&#8217;re quiet, extremely clean, inquisitive, smart (you can teach them to do tricks!), gentle, and affectionate.  That last is particularly nice: Unlike most other rodents, they seem to genuinely like people.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re a good pet for renters who aren&#8217;t allowed to have dogs or cats, too, since they&#8217;re small and live in a cage.  Keep their litter clean and they&#8217;re virtually odorless.  Also they don&#8217;t bark or claw the furniture.  Plus they like to ride around on your shoulder, which is an excellent way to answer the door.<\/p>\n<p>Hm.  I think I just talked myself into getting another pet rat.<\/p>\n<p>(Bonus: Lore Sj\u00f6berg&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/brunching.com\/rodents.html\">Pet Rodent Rating<\/a> is an amusing summary of what makes rats great pets.)<\/p>\n<p>*I was growing up; the rats were mostly full-grown.  Um.  Just in case you were confused.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Presurfer posted some photos of yawning rats from Rats Are People Too, leading me to reminisce about my pet rats. I had several of them growing up,* and I can&#8217;t recommend them highly enough. Quite aside from the obvious &#8220;Oooh, spooky pet&#8221; vibe that might appeal to some of my gentle readers, rats are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24861,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions\/24861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}