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I was only 23 at the time so had lots of time to care for her. They are super smart and funny animals. They are pretty active at night so they need to be in a cage in the laundry or something if you want to sleep. Girl rats are better than boys I'm told. You spend a month keeping them close to your body and then they bond with you and always come back to you. I would keep Nimue under my clothes against my skin all the time and when she was out of the cage she'd run off, do her crazy gymnastics and run up to me again. She would sleep on my shoulder under my hair whilst I was driving. Loved her. She would compulsively collect things for her stash - receipts, apricot kernals, all kinds of things, and I'd see her dragging them across the floor, or find them when I was cleaning up. Often she would just run free over the house and when I came home she would be ECSTATIC,like a dog, to see me. She was one of a kind.