The World's Most Misunderstood Creature: In Rats We Rot on Mosher Mag

Let’s get something straight right now:

Pet rats are not vermin. They’re icons. Tiny Gods. Soft-bodied reapers in fur coats.

The world may call them disgusting, diseased, disposable—but the world is a liar. The world also thinks beige is a personality trait and that “Live Laugh Love” is a spiritual mantra.

Meanwhile, we’re out here with rats curled in our hoods, crawling up our arms like we’re modern-day plague saints, laughing at the way these creatures make normies recoil. And we love it. We feed on it.

Because what’s more punk than loving what society told you to hate?

Rats have been the scapegoats of civilisation since the first man picked up a rock and blamed the shadows for his fear.

The plague? Not their fault. That was fleas and human filth. The fear of their tails? Get over yourself. The panic when one skitters by in a subway station? That’s projection, babe.

You don’t hate the rat. You hate what it represents.

Decay. Dirt. Death. The end of the pretty lie.

And what is the alt community if not a celebration of the end? We live for the breakdown, the rot beneath the surface, the truth under the gloss.

Rats are just like us: scorned, misunderstood, but alive in a way that’s feral and undeniable.

They aren’t trying to fit in. They exist in the margins, and they thrive there. Just like you. Just like me. Just like all of us freaks in fishnets and eyeliner, dancing at the edge of the apocalypse.

Let’s kill the misconceptions.

Pet rats are not dirty. In fact, they’re cleaner than most people you partied with last weekend. They groom constantly, like obsessive-compulsive monks with whiskers. They don’t bite unless you deserve it. They don’t stink unless you don’t clean their space.

They’re also smart. Like… scary smart. Rats can solve puzzles, learn tricks, and come when called. They recognise faces. They hold grudges. They know you. Not just the hand that feeds them—but you. The real you. The you beneath the eyeliner and the trauma and the late-night existential spirals.

They’ll nest in your hoodie and groom your fingers like you’re part of their mischief (yes, that’s what a group of rats is called—a mischief, because even the English language can’t help romanticizing them a little).

They’re empathetic. Loyal. Sensitive. And still—people recoil.

Why?

Because rats remind them of what they’re too afraid to see: That everything rots. That beauty isn’t always clean. That love can come from something with yellow teeth and beady red eyes and still be realer than anything on their curated Instagram feeds.

Let’s talk about why the alt community is so obsessed with these creatures.

Because rats are more than pets. They’re symbols. Living, breathing, tail-wiggling memento mori.

They’ve been there through every collapse. Every city that burned. Every civilisation that crumbled. They are the last to leave the ship and the first to thrive in the wreckage.

They’re our death companions. Our shoulder demons. Our pocket familiars.

You’ve seen them on tarot cards, crawling out of skulls. In tattoos, curled around daggers and roses. In old plague doctor art, writhing in the margins like a warning you were never meant to ignore.

We wear death on our sleeves—black lipstick, bone jewelry, tattoos of things long dead—and rats? They wear it in their DNA. They were born into the dark, born with survival in their blood, born to watch the world rot and keep moving through the ashes.

They’re not afraid of death. They are death, made tiny and soft enough to kiss.

Rats don’t pretend. They don’t fake it for the ‘gram. They don’t ask for forgiveness for taking up space.

And they die young. That’s the worst part. Two to three years. That’s all we get.

But in that short time, they give you everything. They bond to you. They trust you. They love you.

Then they die. Quietly. Gently. Sometimes in your hands. And it shatters you.

Because rats are proof that the most precious things don’t last. That beauty doesn’t need time to make an impact. That death isn’t the enemy—it’s the end of a story that was worth telling.

They’re little tragedies with twitchy noses. And we can’t stop loving them.

To the mischief-makers. The plague princes. The misunderstood, the unloved, the divine little beasts that choose us anyway.

You can keep your purebred dogs and Instagrammable cats. We’ll take the rats——with their haunted eyes and clever claws,—with their rotting elegance and rebellious grace.

We'll name them after Greek gods and serial killers. We'll wear their skulls in resin pendants after they pass. We'll cry for them harder than we ever cried for that one situationship that ghosted us in 2019.

Because rats are more than pets. They’re an extension of the alt soul. Soft, grimy, sweet, strange, and full of secrets.

So next time someone sneers at your shoulder rat? Let them.

Let them see what they fear. Because in that moment—you and your rat?

You’re Gods. You’re ghosts. And you are so, so alive.

For the freaks, by the freaks.

Thanks for reading. Stay strange.

✦ moshermag.wixsite.com/mosher-mag