Pet Stores Are a Rescue in Their Own

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Jake S.

Member
Joined
Apr 12, 2018
Messages
10
Location
Oregon, USA
A week ago, my girlfriend and I wound up at a pet store in Portland, OR that we usually don't go to. Not for any particular reason, we just had one we regularly shopped at already. As we were browsing around looking for rat food, I saw their small mammal section and noticed they didn't have any rats even though I had heard they usually did. After we had picked out what we wanted, we went to the counter. There they were. They had the rats in four ten-gallon tanks with no ventilation besides the mesh top of the tank. They were labeled "small, medium, large" and so on. Obviously kept as feeders, they had no access to water and the only food in the tank was a bagel they could nibble on. We asked them to pull down the small tank and saw that it was a new litter with their mother. The litter had about eight pups all climbing around each other. The staff couldn't tell us which were female or male, so I plucked two up that were female and took them home. They gave us a box with what looked like animal feces to take them home in. They handled the rats poorly and picked them up by the ends of their tails.
Needless to say, my blood was boiling. I wanted to take every rat behind that counter. I get that some shops sell animals as feeders, but I've never seen them sold with such disregard to their health or happiness.
The good news is, after much observation I've felt comfortable enough to introduce the pups to Nettie and Bubs and the two have taken to each almost as a mother for protection and reassurance. I can tell Nettie and Bubs care for them two. I haven't named them yet, but I'll think of something soon.

The question still remains, why isn't there any kind of animal abuse laws against this type of treatment? How can pet stores be so cruel to animals they consider food to others? If they had other animals in those kinds of conditions, the public would go absolutely bonkers.

(The store is called A to Z Pets in Portland, if anyone was wondering.)
 
I don’t understand why they don’t have access to water. It would only take a day for a nursing mom to stop producing milk and a few days for everyone to die from lack of water. Do they want all of their merchandise to die? Doesn’t make any sense to me.
 
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