When Alia Mahmud visited Westfield Annapolis Mall in February 2022, she didn’t go to buy clothes, or to watch a movie or to even meet up with her girlfriends. She was looking for rats. A week earlier, Ms. Mahmud saw a post online about a pack of rodents at the SPCA of Anne Arundel County, whose shelter opened an outpost at the mall in September 2020. When she arrived at the new location and approached the rat enclosure, she saw Snoofles, Algernon and Ikit, 5-month-old sisters who perked up and pressed their pink noses through their crate to get a better look at Ms. Mahmud and her boyfriend. “They kind of ran up to us and said hi,” said Ms. Mahmud, 32, a school therapist in Alexandria, Va. “They melted our hearts with how little, affectionate and outgoing they were from the beginning.”But it wasn’t until a meet-and-greet days later when Ms. Mahmud finally decided to take them home, where Snoofles proceeded to run down her shirt.

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