Why Sponsor Our Rat Residents?

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Moose has joined the permanent resident clan because although we had been working on getting him more comfortable with people and he was making progress letting us hold him, he started having frequent severe nose bleeds. We've never had a rat with nose bleeds before and so we decided it was best for his care to stay at the rescue where he can be sure to get the appropriate prevention, and treatment of his bleeding condition. 

Peanut and Patch were surrendered to the rescue and at the time tehy came, they were said to be full grown. They were sooo small that we thought they were dwarf rats. At that time, Nelson had lost his brothers Tommy and Freddie and also rejected "full" sized rats. Nelson was bullying the big boys and so we thought he would be living as a solo boy for the rest of his time. Then along came Peanut and Patch who we thought were dwarf rats and we thought they would be perfect to integrate with mini boy Nelson! And we were right! The integration went so smoothly and the boys brought back Nelson's young spirit. They ended up being full grown rats in the end but by that time, Nelson had accepted them into his home and was hooked. They lived over a year with Nelson before he passed. They have become such a huge part of our rescue that we will be keeping them as permanent residents. 

Moo Moo

We're sure you've all been following Mooshie's long journey on Instagram over the 8 months that she was with us. She is a very special girl, and is very dearly missed. Stay tuned for more information once we get the chance to do her story justice. 

Char Char (Charlotte) & Lucy

You can sum up Charlottes personality by thinking of that nice little old lady in your life that's kind to everyone and always doing more than you think she should be capable of. Her and her sister Lucy were surrendered by a girl who was moving away to university. She's a sleeve rat through and through! You're wearing a sweater? She's in your sleeve.

For the last couple months of her life, she became paralyzed in her back legs because of what we later found out was likely cancer. But that didn't stop her from doing all the same things she always did. She lived an amazing life here at Frankie's world and is missed by all her sisters and moms. 

Lucy was very similar to Charlotte but was the sneaky one of the Duo. Just when you think she's cosying into your lap for a nice nap, you realize she's chewed a GIANT hole in your PJ pants in les than 30 seconds! But what's life without rat made holes in all your clothing? Not one I want to experience! Rat's make everything better and are always giving you a good story to tell! 

Lucy passed suddenly after initially recovering from a respiratory infection. One day she went into respiratory distress that we think was heart failure secondly to pneumonia. Right till the last breath she was loving her snacks! She passed with a piece of food she was snacking on still in her little paws. That's something we will never forget. 

Maggie

The biggest of the girls, though we don't know how. She must secretly be hoarding snacks and keeping them away from Luna the snatcher! Also hard to believe because she's probably the only other user of the rat wheel and the most frequent user! It's her favourite activity! She loves free roam in the play pen.

Roo

The sweetest most attached rat of the group. She desperately wants cuddles with her hu-moms, but too nervous and easily overstimulated to fully accept all the love she's showered with. She's kind of like the black sheep of the group and needs some quality 1 on 1 time with her moms. Sadly she is nearing the end of her life, not imminently, but she's definitely showing her age. Hard to picture her as an old lady when she still looks and feels like she did at 6mo old when she came to us! For the last few months of her life, she had something going on with her lungs, likely to be fluid overload from failing kidneys which is common in rats. She was living in our oxygen incubator to help her breathe and keep her comfortable for as long as she showed us she still wanted to stick aroung (which was an impressively long time!). 

Nora

Nora left us a few days after we celebrated her 3rd birthday 🎂. She had been loosing weight and slowing down for a little while, and recently had started bleeding quite a bit from her vagina. She had had pyometra in the past so we treated it with antibiotics to see if that’s what it was again, but that didn’t make a difference this time. Given the bleeding and her weight loss, we suspect it was some sort of uterine cancer 😢. She was happy and comfortable right to the end, and she had an amazing life. She was part of someone’s oopsie litter of 6 girls who were some of our original residents. She loved her life here from age 6 months to 3 years, and never knew pain and suffering like many of the rats that come through here. Her and her 8 cagemates had their own room for the first year or so, free roaming 24/7. When we expanded, they moved into the big rat room with everyone else. In her final months though, her and sisters Annabelle and Luna got to live a special life in Frankie’s Room ❤️. They had the whole room to themselves with all the toys and hides and snacks they could dream of. Annabelle was a great caretaker in her later days, often biting me when I’d try to pet her, as if saying “No! Nora needs to rest now!” 🥰. Nora was always the young and healthy looking one, even until soon before her death. We thought she’d be the one to live the longest life ever. Her mind was always still there, but her body unfortunately failed her in the end. We’re so grateful for all the great times and special memories formed with Nora, and she will live on in the history of Frankie’s World. We now only have 2 originals left, Nora’s last sister Annabelle with the pituitary tumor who is kicking ass, and mini rat Nelson. We hope these two stick with us for as long as they can ❤️. We love and miss you Nora, Always Always ❤️🐀🐁. .

Uzu

An older fella who is paralyzed in his back legs from hind leg degeneration but that doesn't stop him from loving free roam and playing in his Cheese! He lives alone but still has plenty of fun ad you can see. Mama S calls him Jaws because instead of being able to run away, he uses his mouth to protect himself. but if you're not putting your hand in front of his face within chomping distance, he's super sweet. 

He a super smart boy and loves enrichment puzzles! He solves them almost immediately! Faster than any dog or cat we've ever given them to! He's our little genius. 

He sadly passed away unexpectedly the same day as Coco George. We are not sure what happened. He was recovering well from a lumpectomy and One minute he was fine and the next we went to check on him and he was gone. It was a very heartbreaking loss.

Penny our free roamer and hyper crazy lady! What a character she is so full of life and adventure. Penny recently had surgery to remove a Very large tumour that was interfering with her ability to move around and enjoy the life she has. She's recovered so well and even at 2 days post operation, she was biting at her hospital cage trying to get out and play and get back to running around the rat room with her sisters and new Bestie Scoobs. She's proof that even rats over 2 can have surgery to remove tumours and give them back their lives (as long as they're otherwise healthy). She is extremely happy and will hopefully continue to roam for many, many years to come!

Penny has more recently been diagnosed with a pituitary tumour. If you follow us on IG you'll have seen that one day we walked in and she was crooked and barely able to walk. Thanks to the wonders of Dexamethasone and Bromocriptine, her symptoms have almost been reversed and she's back to walking and running like her normal self! Unfortunately thins type of tumour cannot be removed but can been managed really well with these two meds and she will hopefully still live for many more months to come like we've personally seen with other rats in the rescue like Annabelle.

Aloe is one of our palliative care ladies who was integrated with all these lovely ladies. She has recurrent tumours similar to her sister Vera so is living out whatever time she has at the rescue. She loves spending her days roaming around Frankies room with the other girls and making beds in all the different huts.

Hope was integrated with this group of lovely girls when she arrived at the rescue. She had chronic pain from macrodontic teeth which means her teeth are much larger than they should be, and a funny shape, contributing to great difficulty eating solid foods, and significant pain that needs to be managed with opioid medications and a special soft food diet. Even with such a painful condition, Every morning and night at meds time, even if she was sound asleep, she would smell her yogurt and SNATCH it up so aggressively and then lick them all up. She was the BEST rat ever ever had at taking her meds. She has sadly passed away and She spent her last months living in Frankies Room roaming all day every day and lived her very best life with her other palliative sisters Aloe and Vera. She is missed so very much but we are beyond grateful that we never gave up on her and got to see her live such a full life.

Tommy is the newest addition to the mini rat clan and he integrated so well with Freddie and Nelson. He made his way to Frankie's world from a lovely family who had him and another mini rat who unfortunately passed away. Following the loss of his casemate, Tommy was seemingly depressed over the loss and the family was not yet ready to adopt some new rats. They wanted him to go to a loving home and we of course said a big YES! From the second we picked him up, he was the cuddliest little boy and is now super happy being part of the three musketeers! We're so happy to have him here.

You'll probably all recognize this heartbreaker too! Freddie is another of the mini rats and is just about the fluffiest rat you'll encounter. He never fails to make everyone smile. We could just watch him for hours he's that cute! 

Freddie and Nelson both came to us at around 9 months old from a very nice family who unfortunately didn't have much tome for them while raising a growing family. We were so excited to have them join Frankie's world as we had never seen rats small and adorable! They melt our hearts and I'm sure they melt yours too.

These girls came from a town very far north and we weren't sure how we were going to get them to us! We received a message from a high school girl in a small, northern town 7 hours away from us asking if we could help her find a home for her rats who she was no longer able to properly care for. Initially, we said we were not able to take them in because we were already at capacity and had no way to get them to us. Instead, we suggested she try various rehoming websites and Facebook groups to try and find somewhere more local. A couple months later, she reached out again saying that she had had no luck and asked if there was any way that we could take them. With no other rescues closer than us, we found a way to make it work. We posted on some buy and sell groups for their town to ask for volunteer drivers where we found a very nice lady and her son who were driving down our way for a hockey tournament that weekend! how Canadian! So with the hockey sticks and skaes, came Jynx and Fern! You'd never have known that they had had minimal interaction with humans prior to arriving at Frankie's world because they come when they're called, are spooky and they love being handled or hanging on moms shoulders.

Everybody loves FRANKS!

Frankie and Phoebe are the founder's of Frankie's world. They came to us after the passing of mice we had previously rescued. We loved having mice and thought rats can't be that different! Boy were we wrong! But in the best way possible. Frankie and Phoebe have an amazing story that I'm sure a lot of you know from social media posts. We will be adding more to it shortly so stay tuned!

Poppy came to us after the passing of Phoebe. We adopted her as she was on her own and we thought her and Frankie would bond together however when we tried to integrate them, Poppy had no interest! But that's ok because she had the most amazing life with us!

Stay tuned for more of her story! We're still writing it and want to do her justice.