It all started around 2008 when two unrelated women – Jessica Florence and Ellen van Deelen – started taking cute photos of their beloved pet rats posing with miniature teddy bears. Five years later, these adorable rat pictures are still traveling around the Internet. They went viral on imgur 4 days ago, but nobody knows the real story behind them.

A simple Google search takes us to Jessica Florence‘s Flickr account, where the first pictures of her rats – Bug, Duck, and Worm – hugging plush toys were posted at the very end of 2007. Interestingly, Ellen van Deelen joined Redbubble at about the same time and started publishing and selling cute images of her rats – Moppy, Witje and Rosie. Although the women seem to be unrelated – Ms. Florence is from Great Britain and Ellen van Deelen is a Netherlands-based photographer – we tried to contact them and ask whether they know each other. While we are waiting for their answers to update this article, we’d like to show you the cute pictures we’ve collected.

Many other Internet users have started to follow these photographers’ leads, taking pictures of their own cute rats cuddling stuffed animals.

Jessica Florence

See more on jessflorence.com and Flickr

Ellen van Deelen

See more on Redbubble

Other people also started taking pictures of rats with plushies:

Image credits: popandopulo

Image credits: Céline Diverres

Image credits: unknown

Image credits: favimages.net