What we do: First and foremost, RatLandia raises fancy rats for pet homes. Not snake food, not laboratory stock. Our rats also do some acting for film and video, amongst our goals is to train reliable, repeatable behaviors that work for projects requiring such activity.
How we go about it: Our fancy rats are handled from early on so they grow up knowing people are part of their lives. The handling, socialization and basic skills we instill in our pets in training becomes the foundation for a great relationship with their future human families. All pups learn the three basics: Stay on the hand, Focus and Sit under hand. Patience, pay attention and hold still, respectively.
About the cat:
Cinder came to live with the rats one very cold winter after deciding it was better to hang out with them eating cat food than to try to make it as a mouser down at the neighbor's barn. She was quite terrified of the cage stack at first but that is where the warmest heat was, so she adapted. She absolutely hates all other cats so is an excellent protector for the Rattery. She'd make friends with a rabid Pit Bull before a kitten, I'll put money on it!
About the human:
Mellissa has been involved with rats since 1988 when she worked at Ferris State Animal Care tending the laboratory rats. Since that time she has had rat as pets and began RatLandia in summer of 2005 when she moved back to Michigan, hauling 14 rats and everything she owned across the country in her beloved Bronco truck.
Currently she is working on her last few classes and thesis project,
"Space Rats: The Legend of RatLandia" which will be complete in 2012 for her Master's of Fine Art in Motion Picture and Television degree, 100% online through Academy of Art University in San Francisco, California. Online other than Directed Study courses, most currently with Ferris State University Welding Engineering Technology Program building space ships for the thesis. She is a far cry from the traditional FSU WET student, yet wanting to learn practical welding skills for many reason beyond rats.
SPACE RATS is a Star Trek flavored live action rodent short story about a group of rats that must leave their home planet since their human is near death. The human has built them the necessary spaceship then reveals to them their legacy; they must return to their home world to find safety once and for all. The human joins them on the journey as the RatBot, ships computer, after uploading his mind as he dies.
Along the way the Space Rats face many challenges and visit different worlds while learning lessons of diversity and understanding along the way. They encounter others unlike themselves as they travel, including aliens (hairless rats!) and bad Burmese rats long lost in space. Were there a way the rats would encounter The Oracle, a Gambian Pouched Rat, who guides them on their quest but we do not have access to any GPRs.
Mellissa gets a lot of ideas through horse training principles. Other than the size thing these two species have a lot in common!
Copyright 2011 RatLandia Rattery
