Meet the Rats: Rocket and Rommie

The new girls now have names! After much pondering we’ve decided to abandon the idea of trying to find a female SF name that easily splits into two nice ratty names à la River Song.

The splodgy black hooded is Rommie. We got as far as “female ship’s avatar” as a potential theme and Rommie (from Andromeda) seemed to suit her.

Unfortunately I wasn’t taken by the other options we came up with — Holly (Red Dwarf) or Moya (Farscape) — for the grey roan, so she is Rocket, mainly because of the speed at which she moved when we first tried to get her out of her cage to come home with us.

At first I assumed that Rommie was the most sociable as she was the easiest to pick up, but I soon realised that that was only because she was freezing in place at the horror of someone having the temerity to try and lift her off the ground. She is a brave and curious creature who will now happily climb onto me, but only on her terms. She is lightning quick and, even if you do managed to pick her up, she can extricate herself at incredible speed and launch herself off in unpredictable directions. Once on you, she will eventually try to get away by digging — between arm and body or through legs — and will squeak her annoyance if she isn’t immediately successful. She is definitely “most likely to escape”, but we are making progress.

Rocket is a gorgeous blazed roan with the prettiest face. I do hope she doesn’t lose all of her colouring.

She is much easier to pick up than Rommie and will tolerate being held for a couple of seconds before trying to wriggle free. Her favourite thing is to climb, mainly, it seems, with the aim of finding a way out of wherever she is and go exploring. She has yet to learn that fingers are not food. She has the potential to be an awesome shoulder rat. Or shoulder-mounted Rocket. We haven’t yet tested her suitably as a pocket Rocket.

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