A disabled woman in Ojai, 60 miles north of LA, has been "rescuing" animals and neighbors called the local Humane Society. A bunch of rats had been dumped on her property and she captured them and put them in cages. The Humane Society in Ventura County, 402 Bryant Street, Ojai, CA 93023,  http://www.humanesocietyvc.org have taken about 50 rats. They have euthanized quite a few and have 30 presently. Photos of a few rats can be found on the guinea pig page. These rats are facing being euthanized soon if no one comes forward to adopt.

Wee Companions is trying to see if we can squeeze in any more rats, but we are at capacity and have been for a while. We already have about 170 rats  in our network between our adoptable rats, foster homes and sanctuary homes.

Any help will be greatly appreciated. If you're able to adopt, please do so. If you're located in San Diego and can foster, please let me know.

Rabbits and guinea pigs are also involved in this rescue.

Note: Please do not contact the Humane Society unless you are able to help. It does no good to contact them and harass them about their policies or plead for the rats unless you are able to actually help by adopting. This has happened during rescues with organizations in the past and all it does it upset the shelter workers and make their jobs harder.

Feel free to post this information on any other rat boards or forums that you are active on.

I know this is not a place for discussion. But I'd just like to show the kind of markings that are available.




Some orange/peach colored females, dalmatians, blues, silvers, and many more.

Thanks for posting CaroCaro and Dearpie.

I got home at 12:46 am after being on the road or gathering animals since 8 am and dring 468 miles.

I still have no idea how many rats we brought home, but a conservative estimate is 150 to 200. By the time we got to Fenella's around 11 or so our only goal was to get everyone out of carriers and into cages. We brought back 22 female guinea pigs and 10 males, all have mites. We had to leave 23 guineas behind    .  As for rats, we have four or five cages of nursing babies, some with more than one mum. At one point we found about 30 babies in a cage with rats that weren't feeding them. So we redistributed them between the nursing mums. We have to assume that all the girls we brought back are pregnant. We pulled 21 three week old babies from a group of mums so that they would be able to concentrate on nursing younger babies. We have everything from day old pinkies to 2 year olds. Everyone is surprisingly sweet.

I brought home some hard luck stories. Paris (a boy that only has 2 feet, one is badly deformed and infected and he only has about 2" of tail) and his brother, Hector, who also is missing most of his tail. She hand raised them as babies after their mother attacked them. Poor things are in such pain they were crying on the way home everytime they moved. As soon as we got to Fenella's we put them on metacam. I didn't hear a peep out of them on the 1/2 hour drive from her house to mine. I brought home the old blind boy. Two young girls with severe head tilt and three young boys. One with head tilt, one with resp issues and a traveling companion.

That's all I have time to update right now.

I have posted photos of Paris, Hector and the other special needs kids I have here in Rat Tails. linky.

Many thanks to everyone that has donated so far. It really goes a long way to helping in this horrible situation. We have lots of spays scheduled for the coming weeks, more rounds of mite treatment and who knows how many more babies.

I think we are officially crazy. Fenella and I were talking a little while ago and if we can quickly move the rats that we have, whether it be Ojai rats or the ones already in our care. We are planning on making another trip up to get more. Someone needs to call the men in the white coats on us.

We are also discussing the possibility of trains or transport of groups. So if you are really interested, let me know and we will make a list to see what areas we can accommodate.

Not sure about Texas, but I'll add it to the list.

And the number continues to grow. We've had three litters born so far. One mum is either PEW or champagne, one is a beautiful black veriberk named Joyclyn I don't know who the third is. I don't know how many babies that add either. Good thing we LOVE babies. 

I posted this on the yahoo forum I belong to, I also contacted The Crafty Rat (a local rescue) to see if they have any room to help. I'll let you know when I hear back from them.

Lisa

Wow I want to help but I bet the chances of getting to east coast are slim to none... 

I'm not sure that we will be able to do a train to the East Coast, but we are having a meeting this weekend and will be discussing our options. It's official, we are crazy people. If we are able to place these animals or our other adoptable animals quickly, we are planning on making another trip up to Ojai to rescue more animals.

Donations can be made to Wee Companions. You can make a PayPal payment to weecompanions@aol.com or use the "Make a Donation" button from the website. It is located on the left under the menu. Wee Companions is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation, so all donations are tax deductible.

All monies collected are going directly to the animals. Since we have to assume that all the females are pregnant, we have many emergency spays ahead of us. The upside of this is, that there will be many spayed females available for adoption at our cost. We have a wonderful vet that has lots of rat spay experience and only charges us $40 per spay. We only charge adopters what we pay for our spays, we don't add anything on.

I have a final count on animals. We have lost a lot of the over 30 orphaned babies that we put with lactating mothers and one mother destroyed her own litter. Our current total is 149 rats and 32 guinea pigs, for a total of 181 animals. I'm sure we will have more litters before this is over as there are only so many spays the vet can do each day.

Please everyone keep in mind, that there are still about 30 rats at the Humane Society in Ojai. If you are closer to their than San Diego, please adopt from the Humane Society. They are requiring this woman to bring in rats on a regular basis, if the ones they have are not adopted all the new ones will be euthanized as they just don't have room.

Thanks to everyone who has donated. I always say that rat people are the best and you continue to prove me right. As a community, I believe we are the most generous in times of need.

There is a good chance we can get them to AZ.

That's wonderful of you Lisa. I'm sure we can work this out.

This is somewhat of a cross post, but I wanted to let everyone know that Second Hand Rats in San Bernardino County, CA (http://secondhandrats.4t.com) will be taking 10 Ojai rats from the Humane Society this weekend. Debbie, the main person there, will be posting pictures of the available rats on the website as soon as possible. They will only be ready to go after they have been quarantined. And they also have other rats available that are not from Ojai.

If anybody in far off places is interested, please let me know ASAP. We are having a volunteer meeting on Sunday and will be asking where people are going for spring break. If we can, we will have our volunteers transport. So speak up now.

I will also need to know how many, ages and sexes you are interested in.

Thanks.

I'm located in north eastern Kentucky, about 2.5 hours south east of Columbus OH. I could take up to 5, of either sex. Any age is acceptable. I would even take in some that had physical 'problems' like missing tails, feet, etc. I do ask though, that none of them be aggressive, but I don't think that'll be a problem.