LONDON: Rattus norvegicus, alias the brown rat, is not everyone’s cup of tea when it comes to pets. Rat phobia nestles deep in the collective psyche. The very word “rat” can send shivers down the spine, loaded as it is with connotations of death, decay and disease.

Human culture has conspired against the rat — everything from the Pied Piper of Hamelin to George Orwell’s Room 101 and Hammer Horror films reminds us that rats are nasty, dirty and just plain yucky. The brown rat gets off relatively lightly compared with Rattus rattus, its black rat cousin who is held responsible for the Black Death. But, there’s no denying it, all rats have an image problem.

Wherever there are people, there seem to be rats. Only one party benefits from this cohabitation, and it’s not us. Keeping the pesky rodents out of the food cupboard has been a pre-occupation throughout human history.

Odd as it may seem, pet rats owe their existence to professional exterminators. Victorian cities were plagued with rats, and rat-catchers were employed to control them. From time to time, the rat-catcher would chance upon a brown rat that wasn’t brown. Colour variations can occur as the result of natural genetic mutations, and it seems likely that these curious specimens were sometimes kept for their novelty value or for the amusement of children. One man who did more than any other to turn the unsavoury inner-city rodent into a domestic pet was Jack Black, the official rat-catcher and mole destroyer to England’s Queen Victoria. He selectively bred hundreds of rats for colour and pattern, and sold them as pets.

Black wasn’t the only one to warm to the much-maligned rodents. The National Mouse Club started in 1895 and was soon opening its doors to rat-fanciers as well. Fancy rats made their first competition appearance at a National Mouse Club show in 1901. Fancy rats are tame and mollycoddled versions of the same brown rats you don’t want to find in your kitchen. Despite their disreputable relatives, keeping a pet rat is no more weird than keeping a gerbil or a hamster.

In fact, they may be more rewarding. “Fancy rats are clean, tame, intelligent and very interactive pets who can develop a close bond with their owners,” says Nick Mays, publicity officer for the UK-based National Fancy Rat Society.

They’re fairly easy to look after, too, and don’t take up much space. They live for only two or three years, however, which is a shame, though if you are looking for a silver lining, that’s not exactly a lifetime’s commitment. There are more than 25 varieties of fancy rat, including the champagne rex and the pink-eyed white.

There are many more varieties of rat-fancier who exhibit their animals at shows around the country.

The rats could also compete in agility events. Naturally inquisitive and intelligent, they happily scurried through tunnels and clambered up ramps.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.