Meet the kids...

So - now I'll introduce the characters of my show! I have two males, Squidge and Sqeek, and one little girl, named Squink.

Squidge was the first baby I adopted (while overseas - I'd had ratties before, in the US). I found him in a petshop near Notre Dame in Paris, France, while on a weekend trip (Martin Luthur King Weekend) with a good friend of mine. He was such a cute, tiny baby! I brought him home on the train to Germany and he settled in pretty quickly. I don't like to name my animals until they show their personalities, and after a while he made his name obvious. "Squidge" is a word my parents used when I was a kid when they grabbed at baby fat or gave big hugs; and Squidge was exactly that - a little ball of baby fat who just want to be petted and cuddled.

Squidge is a standard beige self, whose life now is dedicated to serious snoozing. He'll come out of the cage, where he was snoozing, and wander around the room until he finds a comfortable place to snooze and settles in. Under the covers on the bed and in my desk's drawers are his current favorites.


Squeek followed soon after. It was still cold in March, and I was worried about little Squidge being alone while I was at work and cold in our drafty barracks building. I watched the pet stores in Heidelberg for a long time for a rat who was just right, and even visited pet stores in a few surrounding cities. I had almost given up when I wandered into Dehner (a German garden/pet shop) and saw a little gray ratty, just a little bigger than Squidge. While all the other ratties ran and hid, this little boy came up to the glass and followed my hand back and forth across the front of the tank. The only drawback was that his ears were horribly infected with something -- I later found to be mange mites -- that had curled them all up and made little pimples all over : ( I took him home and used medine to clean up the mites, and the two hit it off right away. He gained his name because he's extremely talkative; as a baby he squeeked like a dog toy whenever you touched him, and 'talked' to you with squeeks and chatters. Now, he still chatters plenty but squeeks much less (though you'd think you were murdering him when you try to clip his claws!!).
Squeek is a grey European husky or roan rat. As he's aged, parts of his grey have faded out to white (like around his face). Though very popular in Europe, true roan rats are very rare in the US, which makes my little squeek all that much more special : )


Squink is my newest baby. I bought her on a whim right before I moved (I know, I'm bad... but they're addictive!) at the same store that I found Squeek in. She was a tiny little thing, that at the beginning actually looked like a banded rat, but in beige, with a dirty little nose. After a few weeks, the color stripe on her back and head faded out, leaving just a little bit of "dirt" on her nose and at the base of her tail - she was a siamese! "Squink" is a nickname my dad used to use when I was a kid, it basically meant "littlest one", and this little girl was exactly that. She has beautiful fine features, very fitting of a lady, and a tail that is about the same length as the boys' even though she's about half their size! She's full of guts and vim though, zapping all over the room like a wild thing when she's loose and attacking her treats like she's starving to death (she's not, believe me!).