is there such a thing as a nice rat?

I know from rats, a little bit.  We used to have them in our old apartment.  Black and greasy, bumping along the walls, discovered as we came home from a fancy party, calmly sitting on our cutting board eating crumbs.

I clearly remember grabbing a cleaver while still in my cashmere dress and hunting it unsuccessfully alongside Sean.  Sean later took to waking suddenly in the middle of the night to kill rats with a baseball bat.  So I know rats are bad news.

But today I saw a nice rat.  Dare I say it, a cute rat.  It was in our neighbor's garden, ambling up to get some of the food he had put out for the squirrels.  It was brown and fluffy in a rabbity sort of way.  Its fur looked clean and soft and it had a nice little rat face.

At least one person in the UK agrees with me that there is such a thing as a cute rat.