[Holly]

I tend to affix "titles" to my pets' names, sometimes, the way that it used to be done in the olde days. You know. "Sir Lancelot, The Brave. Sir Robin, The Not-Quite-So-Brave-As-Sir-Lancelot." And so on. I don't do it with everybody...just when it strikes me.

Here are some examples:

Alpha, my first Betta fish - "The Best Friend In The World"
Vela, my eldest dog - "The Genius"
Pee Wee, my fat dog - "Food Hound"
Darwin, the cat - "Kidiot" (Combination of "kitty" and "idiot.")
Gregor Samsa - "The Love Rat"

Well, I finally found the saying that goes with Gus.

As people around here usually know, I do everything in the world for Gus, and I give him everything in the world that I think a rat would like. (He actually has his own real gold baby ring, in a box, that he plays with.) I cook for this guy every night...and he's the only guy I would do that for! :lol:

About a week and a half ago, when we were playing in the "playroom," which is really a rat-proofed bathroom, Gus found a way to pull himself up to a very narrow ledge in the cabinets, and squeeze his way into the one drawer in the room. (I, of course, took all of the "dangerous" stuff out of this drawer, and same thing with the cabinets.) He seemed to show a whole lot of interest in this drawer.

Eventually, he came out of the cabinets to play with me, and I asked him, "I give you everything in the world. Do you really need everything in the world AND a drawer?"

Well, apparently he does.

At first, we agreed to "share" the drawer. But ever since then, he's been making lots of trips with torn toilet paper and kleenex, and lining "his" drawer with the paper. So now, the drawer is pretty much his.

But I know what expression to put with him, now!

Augustus - "Everything In The World And A Drawer"

 

[CrazyRattieMommie]

Haha, that is way to cute!

 

[kkdepp]

How funny....

My rat took some TP and started twisting in circles wrapping it around him yesterday

I'm never bored when I'm with my rat.

 

[Chivahn]

Cute

One of my cats is named Captain Scratch n Sniff. So you're not alone.

 

[Holly]

That's a clever name!

Yeah, rats are the best! He gets "mad" at the toilet paper if it doesn't go where he wants it to go, and bites and rips it.

But he's my good little/big boy, and we love each other, and he DESERVES everything in the world...and a drawer!

 

[OnlyOno]

haha, it's like everything but the kitchen sink, it's cute.

my mom renamed picasso and mozart "pikachu" and "momo". i think it's cuz she's japanese and saying mozart is difficult, lol. names are silly. our dogs are "black devil" (she's black and used to terrorize our elderly sheltie) and "little cow"/"cow-dog" (she's white with large black cow-spots all over).

 

[2manyrats]

hehe... Gregor Samsa. Is that rat really depressed or something? Or have a tendency to get stuck lying on his back?

And everything in the world and a drawer's really cute.

 

[Holly]

Oh, Gregor Samsa was my first rat ever (Augustus is only my second,) and I have to tell you that I loved my Gregor like a human child. Sadly, due to bad genetics, he only lived to be a little older than one year. (Internal tumors that were undetected, even by a very good vet, and if they had been detected, there was nothing to be done about it.)

I have heard people use the phrase, "Heart Rat," and I would say that Gregor was my "Heart Rat."

I don't name my pets ahead of time...I get to know them, and let them tell me their names, if possible.

Well, Gregor Samsa was SO full of love, and SO social, and had the best personality in the whole world, but...

...he was...y'know...a RAT!

Some people in my life don't say the word "Rat" in a loving way - they scream the word "RAT" at the top of their lungs, meaning, "Let's get out of here now, there's a rat on the loose!"

I thought that my sweet, loving boy would be frequently misunderstood, because he was, on the outside, a "rat," instead of a "puppy" or "kitten." He reminded me of Kafka's "Gregor Samsa," who was, for a time, a perfectly decent human, trapped inside the body of a huge insect.

In anticipation of doing a lot of explaining about how rats are wonderful and not scary, I gave him a name that would demonstrate that things are not, on the inside, always how they appear on the outside.

Many of you have seen it, but here's a pic of Gregor, "The Love Rat."

This was his first day at home.

----------------------------------

I hope my raving about Gregor doesn't lead you to believe that I love Gus any less. It's like having two human children. You love them both "the most," and wouldn't ever want to have to choose. They're my "babies."

Here's Gus' baby picture, so he doesn't feel left out. (Does he look fast? He's REALLY fast!!!)

P.S. I sponsored a rat in England, named Iota. She's a dumbo, and she was born with severe mallocution (teeth problems.) Gus and she became pen pals, and now that he's grown up a bit, he proposed Ratrimony, and she became his girlfriend! If you want to see a picture of Iota, Gus' girl, you can go here. They have LOTS of cuties here:

http://www.cavyrescue.co.uk/sponsor-a-rat.shtml

 

[Holly]

It occurs to me that probably not everyone here on the forum quite "gets" what we're talking about when we react to the name, "Gregor Samsa," because, it's quite likely that many people here either will never have reason to read the works of Franz Kafka, or haven't been exposed to them yet.

To sum up what this is: Franz Kafka, a German author, wrote some really great stuff in his life, but my favorite, and the one generally accepted as his best work is, "The Metamorphosis."

I used to have a good bookmark to the story on the computer, but it isn't there anymore, and so now, the best I can give you is this, if you want to read the short story:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5200

It starts out by saying that a man named Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from his fitful dreams to find he had been turned into a "giant bug." This is meant quite literally. It doesn't matter that it "couldn't" happen - it's happened to him. The rest of the story deals with how people react to the changes in Gregor's outward change, and Gregor's subsequent emotional change.

This was originally written in German, so some translations will say "cockroach," but that's not quite right. Kafka went through a great deal of trouble to describe the "bug," but NEVER to allow an illustration to be printed in any of the books. He thought that the imagination could conjure up something much more horrifying than anything that could be drawn in a picture. (Of course, when I found this out, I just had to do a painting of Gregor Samsa, the bug, since it probably hadn't been done before. I wrote down all of his descriptions of Gregor, and painted something that matched fairly well, IMO. But I'm wandering off the topic.)

Anyway, it's a great short story, and my rat Gregor is named for the main character. I'm sure if you want to read it, it's around somewhere...