I had naively expect the rat rescue centre to be much as I imaged a badger rescue centre or a hedgehog rescue centre to be. A place in the country or suburbs with ranks of clean and orderly cages containing badgers - or hedgehogs - that had been injured my cars or bitten by cats and dogs and otherwise made incapable of living the happy, wild and free life that good old Mother Nature intended for them.
What I had not been expecting was a shabby untidy sitting room in a terraced house in a working class area of Manchester, stacked full of rat cages reaching almost up to the ceiling. And what I was not prepared for was the overpowering acrid scent of rat that hit me. Imagine a single portable gents toilet at the Glastonbury Festival on the hottest of hot Bank Holliday Mondays, add the acrid tang of rat, and you may just get a whiff of it.
The owner of the sanctuary went by the rather wonderful name of Spinthia Sooner
- work that out for yourselves. -
was short, dark haired, in early middle age,
I couldn't help thinking that with judicial use of a bicycle pump, connected to the right place and a few vigorous movements, the the last remaining bumps would just pop out and she would be a perfect sphere.She told us she had a daughter who had now left home, and the daughter's fierce Ghanaian Pouched Rats had once savagely trapped her Mother in the corner of a room until rescue arrived. A case of the rescuer rescued.
But I am being unfair, the griminess of the room and roundness of the Sancturess...
( My word, strangely there does not seem to be an official title for someone in charge of a sanctuary.)
...have nothing to do with the essential thing.
And the essential thing is rats.
First there is no way of avoiding the smell of rat if you keep rats. It is the way they are. Read all about scent marking and a lot more at the excellent website:
Rat Behavour
To all genetic engineers who may be reading this.
Imagine a rat that smelled of attar of roses? Even better, imagine a tom cat that would go around and spray the house with the scent of lavender on a bright Provencal Summer morning, or the smell of pinewood and Spring flowers?
It would be so easy to do. Just tweak a few genes here and there and Bob, as they say, would be your Uncle. (Bob is actually my brother, so that would make us some kind of relatives. Though I'm not sure what.)
You do the engineering and I'll do the marketing. 70/30 shares in my favour. That's only fair because, after all, I would be doing all the hard work.
What do you say? There is a contact form at the side of this blog.
Don't hesitate or someone else will grab the grab this chance of a fortune of Gateslike proportions.
The rats in the Rat Sanctuary were not wild rats rescued from the cruel grasp of Rat Catchers, injured by traffic or pulled half drowned from overflowing sewers. Not these were fancy rats donated by pet owners who could no longer care for them.
And fancy they were.
There were: - There's a list coming up. -
Chocolate Agoutis.
Grey Huskies
Russian Blues
English Cinnamons
American Minks
Silver Fawns
Champagnes
Hooded Topaz
Berkshire - This sounds like Cockney rhyming slang. 'That Alec Smart is a right Berkshire rat!' -
Irish Rats
Essex Rats
Himalayan
Siamese
Burmese
Albino and PEW (Pink eye, white, to you non ratophiles)
and the unfortunate Naked Rat.
To name but a few.
They all rushed to the sides of their cage to greet us
- Us being myself, Kit and Claire. Kit had come to seek replacements for some recently deceased rats of his own. I was the driver.-
all bright eyed and bushy tailed.
Metaphorically. The bit about the tails.
But my favourite of all was an elderly curly coated Rex Dumbo.
- You think I'm making these names up. Don't you? I swear I'm not!
Just check Fancy Rats,co.uk and you'll see. -
Dumbo is the official name, a most unfair one I think, for big eared rats.
Rex, as I'll call him, for I have forgotten his real name, ambled up to the side of the cage and engaged me in silent conversation, while Kit and Claire were involved in long and complicated rodentine negotiations that involved certain discounts for bulk purchases.
I was charmed by Rex. I could see the two of us settling down, sharing a pizza and watching an arty French film on a Saturday night, or discussing the results of the Greek elections over breakfast.
But no. No. I am happy to live on my own, free from the responsibilities that sharing my home with a rat, or any other mammal for that matter, would bring. If I want company I have the pigeons, the magpies, the squirrel, the Sulky Rowan and my team of Homing Snails.
- More about them on another blog -
Besides Rex would have missed the company of his 85 rat friends that surrounded him in that small front room. As well as the guinea pigs, the dogs, the four cats and the parrots. The cats had beautiful patterned coats, one was a Bengal.
- No, not a tiger! A grey spotted cat.-
I did not see the parrots, but Claire did when she went upstairs to the loo. There were more rats upstairs too. And God alone knows what other creatures.
Perhaps even the fabled Yeti is alive and well and living in North Manchester.
I have to stress that all the animals were very well looked after; several dozen rosettes on the wall showed that these were well cared for prize winning rats, not any old riffraff from Mancunian sewers, and besides, Spinthia Sooner was a qualified Rodentologist with a Cert. Rodentology from Cambridge. As she went out of her way to point out.
- I am not making it up! Go to The British Association of Rodentolgists if you don't believe me. -
Yes, all the animals are very well cared for, and if you doubt my word I give you this quote, taken from a five star revue of the sanctuary at Rescue Revue:
This is essentially a one woman venture and she is very knowledgeable, friendly and keen to find the right homes for her rodents. She has organised/helped with some large rat rescues and tries to educate local pet shops about proper rat care. Adoptive owners fill in a questionaire and have a good chat with her before taking rats and she always has a rat to suit (sadly this is because there are so many in need or rescue). I have adopted 5 rats from her and will do again in the future as they are healthy, sociable rats.
"Always has a rat to suit ." If I owned a rat sanctuary I'd have that over the door.
Finally Kit and Claire came to some sort an arrangement and four sandy rats, a cinnamon husky among them, were chosen and some sort of 'buy three, get one free.' deal was done, and I reluctantly said goodbye to Rex and we left to return to Lancaster with a cage full of rats, and a car full of Parfum de Rat.
Back in NUL and three baths later there is still a faint odour that reminds me of Father's Day, my visit to the Rat Sanctuary, and Rex, the rat I left behind.