
03/24/2025
Hello, everyone.
Ill try to make this as short and sweet as possible. I know some of you expressed that venting on my rattery page was distasteful, but I believe I still owe a bit of context.
I am taking a break! I'm unsure for how long, but a break is needed. It took me a month to figure out whether I was just burnt out or I lost the sparkle for breeding... and sadly, I'm still figuring that one out.
This year, quite frankly, has been ROUGH. I cannot begin to tell you how awful I feel. I have absolutely no drive to do anything, not even the things I love. A very close family member has stage 4 cancer and I've been trying to spend more time with them. We just lost our retired girl, Nugget, quite suddenly and I'm sad to say that Gruntilda is on her way out and we are going to give her the very best until she decides she is ready to go.
For those of you who have been following me for years, I think it's obvious how little I've been posting and how much craziness I've been going through lately.
I've experienced the most rat-related problems in these 3 months alone than in my nearly 6 years of breeding. I've made so many broken promises to adopters on my waiting list :( From litters being abandoned completely to rats that suddenly become terrified of people... I've had to switch out rats, tell adopters to wait for another litter, or offer them the sub-par rats for heavy discounts (rats that do not display any aggressive behaviors/adopters made well aware of personalities). I've been making such a mess of things and driving myself crazy.
For now, I will be putting any new lines on hold and sticking to bettering my established lines. Think of me how you may, but I am not equipped enough to handle fixing difficult lines and hard-culling whole litters that do not meet my standards. As a breeder, I absolutely hard-cull, but I dread it and don't want to work with lines that I know I will have to hard-cull offspring often.
My rattery took up about 75% of my life for the longest time and I decided to work PRN at my day job just to be able to put my heart and soul into my rattery. Almost all my funds immediately go towards my animals and my rattery was self sufficient in that way. Now, there is no way I can continue to run my rattery in the way I'd like.
The biggest thing I want to emphasize is I am very sorry. I am sorry for any inconvenience I've caused. All of these hardships have helped me take a step back and realize that a break is needed and I need to reassess all aspects of my rattery.
It may take a few months, but I promise, whenever I come back, all the decisions I've made for my rattery will be for the best interest of my rats, my adopters, and I.
If you have any questions, continue to reach out. I will be stepping away for a bit, but that does not mean I will not try to help you to the best of my ability.
Thank you to everyone who has reached out to me, has been patient, and have treated me with kindness as I navigate these difficult times.
To end things, I have 2 lovely dwarf brothers that will be ready to go 4/24/25. These bubbas are from my lines and I'm 100% confident on them being great rats ❤️ These will be the last babies I will have available for a while, so please reach out if you're interested.
Thank you for everything.