If Someone Smells a Rat, It’s Likely Not a Member of This Fancy British Breed

To most people rats are nasty sewer-dwelling creatures with a reputation for gnawing babies in their cribs and spreading bubonic plague.

To Malcolm Cleroux of Britain’s National Fancy Rat Society, gazing lovingly at Lucia the Norwegian Blue and Maria the Silver Grey, they are intelligent and affectionate companions.

“They are marvelous pets for children,” he said in an interview. “They are very sociable and they don’t bite.”

The reason for this unratlike behavior is that the rodents favored by the society are all descended from a strain bred 150 years ago by Jack Black, Queen Victoria’s royal rat catcher.

They have nothing to do with the plague rats which caused such devastation in Europe during the 14th-Century Black Death and were to blame for London’s Great Plague of 1665.

Any member caught trying to tame a wild sewer rat faces immediate disciplinary action from the society, says Cleroux, a 47-year-old lecturer in music and drama.

Rat fanciers take their hobby with a seriousness that might surprise many outsiders.

Although their pets live only for two or three years, owners become extremely attached to them, as shown by the obituary column of the society’s official journal, Pro-Rat-a.

Lord Snatch, who died last February, is described by his grieving owner as “a rat who thought he was a human.”

Snorri, a Champagne Buck who passed away last August after breathing difficulties, was “incurably inquisitive, he explored the whole house yet, uniquely, never chewed up anything he shouldn’t.”

That is more than can be said for Ricky and Percy. “I still get a lump in my throat every time I look at the holes in my curtains and the gnawed speaker leads,” laments their long-suffering former keeper.

Nor is rat-fancying without problems while the little fellows are alive. An anxious correspondent writes to the editor of Pro-Rat-a:

“I have a black-capped white rat called Gem. She doesn’t often squeak but she often makes a quacking noise. She also snores. Is this unusual?”

It would appear so. Cleroux explains that rats generally make no noise at all and can be relied on to behave anywhere.

“People will quite often go down to the pub with a rat on their shoulder,” he said.

But the society is not really in favor of this sort of thing. Rats tend not to like bright lights and loud noises.

Fear of rats is something visceral and not fully explained, Cleroux says. People instinctively link the rodents with dirt and sewers, and women traditionally feared that they would run up their skirts.

And if you think a rat is just a rat, you are wrong. The judging at the society’s 40 rat shows put on across Britain each year is tough, and a winning rodent must match up to exacting standards.

Ears must be tulip-shaped, eyes bold and bright, whiskers intact and not deformed, coat clean, racy and sleek, tail not kinked and belly clean.