Cat curling - neat!
Being named âMelchettâ would definitely bring out assholery. 
A side job at uni had me and a couple of other students involved in a study involving (and, naturally, caring for) large white rats, several of which were not involved in any study and who were put on âfree feedâ (read: as much food as they wanted). Those babies were huge⌠and quite docile since we liked to handle them every once and awhile.
Roomba Cat.
He was named that way because of his attitude. Percy was a sweet dumbass and Baldrick was always trying to helpâŚ
Sometimes a name comes immediately, Chief was named before he left the shop, but sometimes you wait.
We used to call this âkitty bowlingâ, but âcurlingâ is the better term
Snuggles.
So theyâre chicken nugget size, you sayâŚ? 
(Please donât eat the tiny bunnies.
Unless theyâre destroying the ecosystem, in which case pass the ketchup.
But otherwise no!!)
Ground Gremlins
I had pet rats as a youngling. Didnât have any bite me, but many peed on my shoulder. In the end I stopped keeping pet rats because of their relatively short life and tendency to die from cancer. 
Had one hamster who thought I was a chew toy though. Heâs lucky he was cute.
And saves on swiffers.
Looked up pygmy rabbits this morning after seeing the latest XKCD. Someone please get Randall Munroe a medal.
Youâve read the book, youâve watched the film - now try the stew?
I had a great, gruff male rat who fathered 12 kids (in one go) and he was epic, lived to just over 5. Thatâs legendary!
My second pet rat had a huge tumor on her side at 4 1/2 years old. (Also three legs; she chewed through an electrical cord and then chewed off her burned front leg.)
My sisterâs godfather was our vet and I begged him to remove her tumor. He had to have a frank discussion with the 10-year-old me about her lifespan.
Whoa âBig Daddy Ratâ!
Did you ever do the âtrickâ where youâd lift up and support your rat from under their forearms ('twixt your thumb and index finger) and dangle them, then gently stroke the length of their body â the slack! â until the rat totally relaxed, its body lengthening until it looked like a thick limp strand of spaghetti? I did that a few times with one especially docile lab rat on free-feed. One day, with the âtrickâ in hand, I walked down the hall to the psych dept. associate profâs office; he gave us our work assignments. He didnât notice me walk up as I very gently âflobbedâ his arm once with the super-long wet noodle rat. As much time as he had spent around rats, he claimed to have never seen anything like that, but did state that it made sense, given their ability to squeeze through very small openings. Anyway, I liked that rat. It enjoyed relaxing in the crook of my arm every now and then.
