RATZILLA (VIDEO): We are featured on GMA 7's iWitness... rats deserve our love and care too!

iWitness Howie Severino, #closeencounterwitharat

Catch us on iWitness on August 23rd at 10.30 pm on GMA 7.
It's about time we debunked the myths surrounding rats!

#closeencounterwitharat

"Rats deserve our love and care too!"

Watch this video excerpt from GMA 7's News To Go earlier today (August 22nd)

Here's the iWitness documentary featuring us! =)

Catch us on iWitness tomorrow August 23rd!
Earlier today, we had a brief chat with Mr. Howie Severino for the News To Go show. This is an exciting prospect as this would finally give us passionate pet rat lovers the chance to air our side -- rats are not as ferocious or vicious as they are portrayed to be! Catch us on iWitness tomorrow, August 23rd Saturday at 10.30pm on GMA 7. It's about time the myths about rats are busted and we show you the cute and lovely side of rats as pets.

Image courtesy of News To Go (GMA 7).

Outlook for pet rats in the Philippines

As a pet rat lover, one of my goals is to spread love and create awareness about pet rats. This might sound too ambitious for you, but anyone could move mountains in the name of love! We even set up birthday celebrations for them!

My rats live an average of 2 years more or less.
It's great they've reached this old, wish we could love longer.

As a way of promoting and elevating their image, we've been parading rats in public since 2010 and many people have positively been affected once they had the chance to pet and touch them. Hopefully, our rat videos on youtube.com/RattusChoki (look for the playlist 'Ratzilla') would serve as a solid documentation to their cute and friendly personalities.

Why pet rats?
They're very much like dogs but they come in smaller sizes which is especially good where space is your concern. They're also a hardy species, surviving on a diet which requires 95% to be grains or carbohydrates. Yes, all they need are grains and carbohydrates (eg. barley, rice cooked or uncooked, pasta, etc) and other stuff are just supplements. This means that they're low maintenance pets, but all they need from you is your love and attention.

Rats are very clean creatures who love to bathe themselves.
This water bowl serves as their food fishing activity and bath time at the same time. Effective!

Pet rats don't have any attitude problems, which is why they're highly recommended for kids (just remember to handle them gently). They love to pose for the camera and with their lovely personalities, they could easily win you over.

Just like my story: I used to be afraid of rats but got curious with those rats with black and white color combo and got 3 of them a few days later. No sooner than 3 months later, I've already overcome all my fears! Sweet!

The Rattus University Tour
Surprisingly when I was touring them around in the Morayta U-belt, they were quite popular with kids and girls in school! Anyone here from San Sebastian College or UE or FEU? You might have briefly seen me around back in September 2011! =)

Questions? Comments?
Thanks for reading! For questions or comments about pet rats, kindly post a comment below and we'd answer back ASAP. If you're not a fan of rats, hope this post would at least shed some of the myths about rats. Yes, more and more people are getting to love them here in the Philippines. Hopefully they'd become a household name! Don't forget to stay tuned for the show tomorrow! Here are some of my rat vids that might interest you. To see them all, just click here to check out our Ratzilla playlist in YouTube =)

Thoriel the wild rat takes a nap