April 4th is World Rat Day

Naked Man With Rat
by
Lucian Freud

April 4th is World Rat Day, a holiday designed to recognize the fancy rat as a wonderful pet and companion animal for people of all ages. Sometime in 2002 on the ratlist, the longest standing mailing list on the internet dedicated to the topic of the pet rat, a discussion was sparked about the possibility of initiating a holiday to honor and promote pet rats as the wonderful companion animals they are. The date of April 4th was selected to be World Rat Day because this is the only certain date associated with the beginning of the ratlist (under the current ownership of James Kittock and Robyn Arthur). Any day of the year could have been selected but April 4th was settled on as a small tribute to the ratlist, a list that has truly been a great boon to all pet rats everywhere.