Rats

There’s an unspoken rule that if you put a hat on any animal, it’s automatically adorable (see: Trotter, the Californian bulldog). There’s also the universally accepted truth that everything is cuter in a miniature size. So what happens when these two factors are combined? We'd like to introduce you to the Rats in Hats Tumblr, an explosion of tiny rodent adorableness.

If you happen to have a pet rat -- and we're not recommending it -- they can apparently be trained to run through obstacle courses made from video cassettes. If only there was a animal Olympics you could enter them in.

As the 2012 presidential election nears and campaigns get even nastier, we present this cute video as an example of unity and togetherness. It's a rat and a cat sharing a bowl a milk! (No symbolism here, we promise.)

Potty-training a baby? Feh. Try potty-training a rat. The woman in this video (who, according to the self-written description on YouTube, is diabolically sensitive about anyone questioning her bathroom's cleanliness) managed to teach her hairless albino rat how to use a toilet whenever he has to, you know, make with the pellets.

After watching this rat climb through a crawl space like a ninja, we can only hope our place is never infested with such a nimble rodent.

Housing Authority worker Jose Rivera was filling in a rat hole in Brooklyn's Marcy Projects (childhood home of Jay-Z) last week when three of the vermin rushed out at him. So he swung his trusty pitchfork at the rats and struck the largest one. And boy, was it large.