Associations and accessors...has to be something obvious I'm doing wrong

I'm quite the Rails beginner because I'm trying to do something pretty fundamental with associations. I think I just need a good shove in the right direction. TIA!

schema: CREATE TABLE `ticket_statuses` (   `id` int(11) NOT NULL,   `status` varchar(255) default NULL,   PRIMARY KEY (`id`) );

CREATE TABLE `tickets` (   `id` int(11) NOT NULL,   `title` varchar(255) default NULL,   `details` text,   `status_id` int(11) default NULL,   `opened_at` datetime default NULL,   `closed_at` datetime default NULL,   `last_activity_at` datetime default NULL,   PRIMARY KEY (`id`),   KEY `fk_ticket_status` (`status_id`),   CONSTRAINT `fk_ticket_status` FOREIGN KEY (`status_id`) REFERENCES `ticket_statuses` (`id`) );

models: Ticket belongs_to :ticket_status TicketStatus has_many :tickets

ticket controller: ... def list     @ticket_pages, @tickets = paginate :tickets, :order => "id DESC", :per_page => 10 end ...

ticket list view: ... <% for ticket in @tickets %>     <tr class="<%= cycle("list-line-odd", "list-line-even") %>">         <td class="name"><%= link_to ticket.id, { :action => 'show', :id => ticket }, :class => 'ticket-yellow' %></td>         <td class="name"><%= h(ticket.title) %></td>         <td><%= ticket.ticket_status.status %></td>         <td><%= ticket.last_activity_at %></td>     </tr> <% end %> ...

error: You have a nil object when you didn't expect it! The error occured while evaluating nil.status

Extracted source (around line #16):

13: <tr class="<%= cycle("list-line-odd", "list-line-even") %>"> 14: <td class="name"><%= link_to ticket.id, { :action => 'show', :id => ticket }, :class => 'ticket-yellow' %></td> 15: <td class="name"><%= h(ticket.title) %></td> 16: <td><%= ticket.ticket_status.status %></td> 17: <td><%= ticket.last_activity_at %></td> 18: </tr> 19: <% end %>

All I want to do is display the ticket's actual status, not the status_id. Do I have an association setup incorrectly? Am I breaking a naming convention or something? Thanks for any help!