Name: Forth Sex: Doe Variety: Black roan Date of birth: Early April 2001 Died: 3 April 2003 (pts - mammary tumour) Weight: 367g (4 February 2002) 489g (5 November 2002)

Forth was a very friendly and outgoing rat, like her sister, Skye. She had excellent health for most of her life. She never had myco or any other illness, although in October 2002 she developed a small benign mammary tumour under her left arm. We decided to have it removed, and she made a fast recovery from the operation. Unfortunately she developed another tumour in her groin area early in 2003. It wasn't in a suitable position to be removed, so we left it until it started to bother her, then sadly had her put to sleep. Forth went to several shows and won quite a few certificates, four rosettes and a trophy.

We bred Forth to Gill Thomas's Stan in November 2001 and she was a lovely mum, taking good care of all her 11 babies, even when they pestered her when she was tired. We kept one of her babies, Skerry.

Why did Forth have such an odd name? We wanted to give her and her sister snowy Scandinavian names, but Helga and Ulrika didn't suit them. After we settled on Skye's name, we tried to think of another Scottish sounding name and we looked at a map of the islands. Because she was our fourth rat and we saw the Firth of Forth, the name stuck!