WOW! This forum is a little different than most I have posted to but I think I will get used to it in time, lol.

My name is Cassandra and I am from Eugene Oregon. I know quite a few people here from PetTalk. Hello everyone, hehe.

Anyways, you can call me Cass for short. I have a beautiful baby boy named Dylan who just turned 13 months on Christmas. He's the highlight of my life, always keeping me onmy toes and making my day brighter. He's a great baby and I couldn't have asked for a better child. I am not married but my sons birth was planned. I don't know if I will ever get married, but a family is great and we plan to have another soon! Dan is my partner and is a wonderful dad. He reads to Dylan, sings to him, plays and invents games, etc. He also gives me my much needed mommy breaks, whether it be for a nice stroll outside or a long bath or nap, he is always there for me. So that consists of my skin family...now onto my fur family.

I breed pedigreed and ribbon winning fancy rats for both show, breeder and pet homes. I take the fancy VERY seriously and always breed with certain goals in mind. I do not breed just to see a litter being born, I breed to improve the overall fancy and pet rat trade. I breed rats who are resistent to disease, friendlier, less prone to tumours etc. I currently have 8 bucks, and 7 does. I will be adding one more buck to the family in March, a Russian Blue dumbo velour berkshire. He is comming all the way from Canada!

I am going to post a reply for I feel this post is getting rather long......

Breeder of quality pet, show and breeder fancy rats, in a variety of types such as tailess, Russian blue, odd eye, hairless, rex, velveteen, double rex and more! We have award winning rats in our lines!

My bucks (male rats)consist of the following love bugs:

Basil- black dalmation dwarf buck, also has a mask
Kizmet- black eyed beige self standard
Chubbs- silver black berkshire tailess carrier
Meeko- Fawn dumbo tailess carrier
Jupiter- black double rex dumbo carrier, mismarked irish
Tiny- dilute black tailess carrier self
Peanut- black self dumbo double velveteen
Red- red eye dilute buck, which means he is a ruby eyed white self This is caused by the dominant white spotting gene or RED (red eye dilute, turning black to a white coat and diluting the eyes from black to ruby, this is the same gene responsible for odd eyes and blazed/husky rats)

My does (female rats):
Wrinkles- double velveteen black irish dumbo carrier
Cleo- dumbo agouti self tailess carrier
Cotton- agouti self velveteen tailess carrier
Roxy2- blue-beige patch stripe dumbo/odd eye carrier
Paprika- Fawn dumbo tailess carrier self
Kinky- odd eyed white self double velveteen dumbo carrier
and last but not least Jasmine- jester faced (mismarked blazed) lilac odd eyed capped

Breeder of quality pet, show and breeder fancy rats, in a variety of types such as tailess, Russian blue, odd eye, hairless, rex, velveteen, double rex and more! We have award winning rats in our lines!

I also have three Bengal cats; Cheetah, Houdini and Mystic. Houdini is the mother is Cheetah and Mystic as well as Tin Tin, another of our cats who lives at our house. Tin Tin and Cheetah are from the same litters, Mystic is from Houdinis first litter. They are all pedigreed and bred by me. There is also Spanky, who lives at the house. He is an orange tabby DSH cat. Houdini and Mystic are marble Bengals, and Tin Tin and Cheetah are spotted/rosetted Bengals. Neither of them have the nice russet coat, to me darker is better. In Houdinis second litter she produced two melanistic kittens as well.

I also cat sit and am the co-owner of three cute kitties named Cleo, Sadie and Simon. Sadie and Simon are siblings, and both gray ticked tabbies. Cleo is a fluffy calico girl. I also take care of several strays and feral cats. I bottle raise feral cats and volunteer at the Oregon Feral Cat Coalitions spay/neuter events as well, as a veterinary techinician. My lastest feral rescue was a beautiful Maincoon mix kitten named River, who I bottle fed from five days of age. She was placed with my lactation consultant into a wonderful home where she is spoiled rotten!

Breeder of quality pet, show and breeder fancy rats, in a variety of types such as tailess, Russian blue, odd eye, hairless, rex, velveteen, double rex and more! We have award winning rats in our lines!

I also own one white spot gecko named Spot, who I rescued from the petshop I used to work at. I found him stuck to a glue pad underneath a shelving unit one day while cleaning. With some help from my boyfriend and a big bottle of vegetable oil, we managed to unstick the poor guy, who only lost a few scales in his traumatic ordeal. I told my boss he died, as I didn't want to risk him getting out again and rotting to death on a glue board. So he went home with me where he lives in a nice 10 gallon aquarium.

Then there is Speedy, my hedgehog. He is a chocolate chip hedgie and quite the personality man. He loves bananas, crickets and meal worms.

One day my cat Cheetah decided to bring me a present, which resulted in my new pet house mouse Fred. He is the tamest mouse I have ever had, and never bites/jumps/tries to run away. he's the sweetest little guy. I call him my super mouse!

I also have a California Desert Tortoise which I adopted from the Joshua Tree Tortoise Rescue when I was 17 and living in 29 Palms California. These tortoises are endangered species and you must have a license to keep them in captivity. It is illegal to capture one fromthe wild, as well as let them back into the wild if they have already been in captvity. He's an awesome dude and loves his veggies!!!

I also have some exotic animals here as well. Rock cavies, spiney mice, degus, jirds, pantagonian cavies. I run an exotic animal santuary so most of my time is spent rehabbing these animals. I also take care of wildlife also and am licensed in both California and Oregon. My main focus is on birds. It was a shock moving to Oregon and doing wildlife rehab. There are some birds here I had never seen or even heard of when living in California. It has truly been a learning experience.

Well I hope everyone enjoyed my very long introduction. I tend to talk a lot sometimes, lol!

Cass

Welcome Cass, I'm so glad you're with us. I have to say I truly enjoyed reading your introduction -- you sound like such an interesting person with such an exciting life and love for animals!! I have never met anyone owning a rat, much less breeding them. It will be fabulous getting to know and meet your exotic pets, plus your cats, plus all the others. This is going to be fun.

Please let me know if you need help posting pictures.

Oh yes let us know if you need help posting pics. I can't wait to see your family. I couldn't believe I was still reading about hte same person. You do a lot and take care of your baby, Dylan too. Kudos to you.

Thanks lol! I know I talk a lot sometimes but I really get into my pets when I post about them. I knw how to post pics, but Iam trying to take some new cuter ones, hehe. I will post some in a few minutes......Hope you like them!

Oh I see that you can't upload files here. Oh well I will need to upload some to Webshots then. Imagestation has been doing a terrible job uploading my pictures so I prefer to just use links, but here are a few pictures I already have in Imagestation. Hope you like them!

Roxy and Baby- two dumbo babies that I placed

Peanut the Rock Cavie with my guinea pig in the front

Roxy pregnant


Breeder of quality pet, show and breeder fancy rats, in a variety of types such as tailess, Russian blue, odd eye, hairless, rex, velveteen, double rex and more! We have award winning rats in our lines!

Here is an amazing photograph! This is one of my old does (was placed with another breeder in Canada) who was the best mom ever! She had her own litter, then took care of her sisters and then took care of Roxys when she failed mother hood! She had 28 babies to take care of, and half of them weren't even hers. Rats are just cool like that!

Breeder of quality pet, show and breeder fancy rats, in a variety of types such as tailess, Russian blue, odd eye, hairless, rex, velveteen, double rex and more! We have award winning rats in our lines!

Oops, forgot the picture, lol!

Oh ya, those pink wiggly things are rat kittens. :P

A few more pics:
Here is Bandit, a patched BEW buck

Bandits brother Pirate
River and Bandit, this is the bottle fed kitten!

Roxy the first- a blue beige split cap strip. She was my favorite girl She was stolen from alady I knew. She never cam back.

my first dumbo tailess baby born in my rattery and in the Northwest!

blue agouti tailess buck, father to many of my babies

Roxys eyes, one pink and one ruby

a cute pic I took

Roxys first litter

Speedy and Cheetah

Speedy

Speedy again, hehe


hey you all asked for picture, mwaahahahaha!

River and Bandit, the were the best of friends

and for those who have never seen a pantagonian cavie:

my guinea pig

Lucy

my bourkes austalian grass parakeet

my birdies again

Peanut the rock cavie

rock cavie and guinea pig

my latest litter

Our second Bengal litter, not all are in this pic though:
you can see Tin Tin and Cheetah at the bottom
Mystic:

Houdini and her Bengal Brood ©Cassandra Barlow (the name, Bengal Brood is copywrited by me )

Simba (long departed, RIP)

Well I know these pictures are awful, I promise to post better ones tomorrow in the appropriate sections. Thanks for the very nice invite! Hope to hear from you all again soon.

Cass

oops! Almost fogot! If you want to read Rivers story, here is the link:

Sorry but I erased the first pic on accident, lol Rivers page

WOW You have a lot of cool animals. I almost want a rat after looking at your babies. They are so cute. I have never seen a tailess one. I suppose those were bred for people who don't like the way rat tails look. My cousin's son had his rat, Whiskers, here this Christmas. He just rode around on Tyler's shoulders. Thanks for posting so many pics. I loved it!