Pet Rats - Fiction

Fiction

Samantha Martin, a professional animal trainer for films, commercials, and music videos, has claimed that rats are one of the easiest animals to train due to their adaptability, intelligence, and focus. Rather than portraying pet brown rats as thoroughly domesticated, they are often cast as a wild brown rat which a character tames.

The short novel Ratman's Notebooks by Stephen Gilbert was the basis for the films Willard, Ben, and a 2003 remake of the first film. Here, the protagonist befriends the rats found in his home and builds up a close relationship, only to have it end tragically. While these movies generally emphasize the popular perception of malevolence—they kill people, cats, and ransack grocery stores—other wild rats who become pets are portrayed in more neutral to positive ways; the television show, House, shortly featured "Steve McQueen", the pet rat of the titular character, and the 2007 film, Ratatouille, is about a rat described by Roger Ebert as "earnest... lovable, determined, gifted" who lives with a Parisian garbage boy.

In many versions of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, the master and adoptive father of the turtles is Splinter, who was once the pet rat of ninja Hamato Yoshi and learned his martial arts skills by imitating his owner.