For the Glory of the Cuddly Pets (Picture & Story Thread)

I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself. I love my pets. I especially love my cat who is currently back in Florida and who can't be with me at this current moment in time. I wanted to make a thread where we could all share pictures of current and past ( ;^; ) pets and share little stories about them whenever we wanted to.

So first things first, my big old baby cat Simba. I found him back when I was living in Orlando. Or rather, he found me. He was starving and meowing at the door, his ribcage was clearly showing and he was running away from two rather large dogs who were pelting after him. I immediately grabbed him and smuggled him inside to save him from a rather nasty fate. I took care of him for the night, fed him, watered him, and generally cuddled him. He was extremely affectionate and nice from the get-go. Unfortunately, my roommate at the time insisted we put him in the backyard for the night to avoid him and their cat getting into any tussles. I didn't want to, but them's the breaks, right?

In the morning he was gone, and I was sad and worried. I knew he'd leave, but what I didn't expect was him to come back that very same day. This time, he was bleeding severely from a large laceration underneath his right side and kept insisting to be near me. I took him to the vet pronto, got him fixed up, and he became my cat. Got him all nice and fat. He's probably the cutest cat ever. He's had some rather bad luck, he got hit by a car at one point then fixed up by the vet, but he's still adorable and sweet and my big baby.

I just recently (on January 1st) acquired two rats from somebody giving them away because their daughter wasn't taking care of them properly, and they definitely show behavioral signs of neglect. Dale and Bentley were the names given to them by their previous owners, and I don't want to change them now since they're used to being called them. Dale is a very skittish and shy rat with trust issues, but he LOVES to make little nests out of fabric and paper. He also loves marshmallows with a passion! Super cute. :I<3U: Bentley is less about treats and more about EXPLORATIONNNN~ He tries to get out of the aquarium tank (they came with it, I'm buying them an actual cage soon) and off of us in the most creative ways imaginable. I actually had to take his exercise wheel out of the cage because he kept trying to scale it to get to the top of the aquarium. What a tricky little guy! He's always desperate to be out of his cage and on my shoulder, and I can't even manage to take the water dish out to refill it without him scaling me like a jungle-gym.

Dale is the black rat, and Bentley is the white and light brown one. Taking this shot was actually nothing short of a miracle, as Dale is very shy, as I mentioned before. He's typically never that keen on coming on top of his little hut to say hello to me.