KRL believes in supporting animal rescue in its many forms in any way that we can. This week we are interviewing a very unique rescue in New York called Empty Cages Collective.
Pet rat rescue volunteers often get asked what we rescue our rats from. You could give a literal response—overly full shelters, irresponsible owners, changes in a person’s life situation, abandonment—but more recently, I’ve taken a more philosophical view: we save them from unlucky circumstances.
The two groups of does faced each other across the kitchen floor. Their beady little eyes narrowed as they squinted at each other nearsightedly. On one side, this was merely curiosity. On the other side, rage was building.
After Bluey and his son passed, Spotty found himself in the unenviable position of raising four adolescent male rats without the aid of good teeth or superior body mass. The teenagers rampaged up and down the cage, tipping bowls, humping the indignant Spotty (“Ah have been violated”), and devouring every scrap of food before Spotty even saw the food bowl. He was especially put out when they ate his specially prepared baby food that, along with applesauce and soft bread, was the only thing his teeth could handle.
Smudge came from humble beginnings. Born somewhere in Alberta (the supposedly “rat-free” province), he was presumably one of several in a mass-produced litter of Himalayan marked rats. Due to the ignominy of not having his testicles descend at five weeks, he was mistaken for a female and shipped along with his sisters and a similarly delayed brother to a pet store in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
As the clock strikes seven, the crowd quiets and takes to their seats. It is a busy night, with only a couple chairs empty and the coffee pot is already half-drained. A portly male in a white and black polka dot outfit waddles up to the podium, clears his throat and begins.
My position by the window in the family room was a splendid vantage point from which to observe next door’s cat when he came under the fence to dig holes in Fiona’s herb garden. I always tried to tell her, waving my arms in the air and bobbing up and down, but Billy usually disappeared before Fiona finally got to the window.
