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I'm adopting two young female rats on Thursday. I set up a huuuuge cage my boss gave me; it has a homemade hammock, a hanging plastic tub, a sturdy plastic tube, a brick, a couple used (cleaned) bird perches, a tissue box, and a big mason jar with some torn up paper towels, plus shredded newspaper for bedding. I haven't had a pet rat since I was a little kid, so I'm wicked excited 
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Jun 29, 2010 01:38
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Amiss posted:[newspaper thing]  Luckily the free local newspaper is soy-based ink on recycled paper, so I have an essentially unlimited supply of free, safe bedding.
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Jun 29, 2010 19:06
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I caught my new little friends napping in their hammock this afternoon. Tegan is the one looking at the camera; Moose is the one being sat upon.  It's bizarrely fun to figure out what foods they like. Both go nuts for garbanzo beans, lettuce, and kale, and they hate grapes.
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Jul 13, 2010 04:48
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Gravity Pike posted:I was about to bitch you out for feeding your rats grapes, having heard that it causes kidney failure, but I guess that only applies to dogs. The only results I could find of rats and grapes after a quick google search was that grapes seem to protect fat rats from heart disease. I wanted to feed them mostly/only whole foods so I read everything I could find about rat nutrition like five times before even bringing them home. No worries.
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Jul 14, 2010 18:28
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My two girls are finally socialized enough that I've been letting them have free run of my bedroom (supervised, of course). They're both really stoked for the first 10 minutes or so, but then the shyer, smarter one (Moose) seems to go into... the only way I can describe it is I guess sensory overload? She stops coming when I call her and just hides behind the dresser and refuses to move while her sister keeps playing. Is this pretty normal? Is there anything to do about it but gradually increase her playtime? Cruddy cell phone picture: Moose learned to turn the track wheel and click the mouse at the same time. If she teaches her sister Tegan to push her around I might have to buy her an account.
Indigestable fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Sep 23, 2010 |
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Sep 23, 2010 22:57
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That helped a lot. Thank you I cuddled with her more before letting them run around and although she still ended up hiding behind the dresser, she came out more easily. It's not that there's anywhere in the room I can't get to her but I feel so bad when she squeaks at me.
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Sep 24, 2010 05:02
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This page is scary and sad  I'm getting a (neutered) boyfriend for my two little girls. I'm so excited. Just gotta pick up a quarantine cage tomorrow and this deal is done.
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Oct 6, 2010 05:22
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 My new rat, Zinc He's neutered and huge and his ears make him look totally derp but he's very sweet. The girl I got him from said she originally rescued him from a bad situation but she didn't give any details.He was really shy and just... slow... at first. Like slow-moving and he didn't know how to sit on shoulders. After a brief quarantine (his previous owner had quarantined him and was really on the ball about vet checks so I didn't think a whole month was necessary) he met the girls and I think they're doing him a world of good; he actually runs now! He's easily 2-3 times the size of either Tegan or Moose and eats constantly to the point that Moose will sit on the food bowl until he shoves her off. He went on his first outside shoulder ride two days ago and didn't fall off like he had been doing, although he did pee down my boyfriend's back. Tegan!  Moose!  T&M's previous owner said one of their parents had a rex coat and that's why theirs is kind of patchy/semi-curly. It's really noticeable next to how shiny and smooth Zinc is. However, he smells much worse. Boy-rat musk 
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Oct 22, 2010 17:33
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Is it normal for male rats to make a lot more noise than females? It isn't loud but Zinc does this really low almost-squeak, mostly when he seems to be happy. It varies between the almost-squeak and a sort of "hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo" laughing kind of noise that I've never heard from my girls.
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Nov 2, 2010 00:10
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Thanks, RazorBunny and Big Hug Bug! I was worried it might be respiratory but it's not all the time, only when I tickle him or he's sitting on my shoulder. He is really pretty big so that must be why it's low-pitched. Despite him being 2-3x their size, one girl or the other always has him pinned on his back
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Nov 2, 2010 19:10
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Big Bug Hug posted:They'll pee a bit when young but stop doing it quite so much as they grow. And you'll get used to it :P My girls stopped peeing on us/the bed/floor completely at around 6 months old. Now they really only do it if I take them on a long walk and they can't help it, and they figured out the litter box in 2 days. Rats are smart. (And fastidious. I love the grooming sessions they have after we play with them - "Ugh ew humans are so gross!")
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Nov 17, 2010 21:12
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I found quite a bit of dried blood in the cage yesterday  Nobody's acting weird and I did a pretty thorough check and didn't find any wounds. Since one of the bloody objects was a carrot I'm kind of wondering if somebody broke a tooth, but they're eating normally and a cursory mouth check didn't reveal any missing teeth (although maybe shortened? It's hard to tell).
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Dec 4, 2010 01:27
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One of my rat minions has learned to attack my boyfriend's face on command Her running down the wrong arm was my fault; the camera was in her way. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLLo4G0wM5o I find it way too amusing.
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Dec 18, 2010 23:05
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Slinky Weasel posted:Haha, my rats will give me kisses. They also like to try to groom my hair, like eyebrows and eyelashes and my goddamn nose hairs. They'll stick their noses in one of my nostrils and try to pry it wider with their clawed paws. My Moose comes up and grabs my lower lip to pull my mouth open, then climbs half inside and inspects my teeth.
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Jan 24, 2011 05:30
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It's more of a forcible surprise attack. She's learned to take "No mouth rape!" for an answer.
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Jan 24, 2011 09:53
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I actually quite like the Corn Nuts smell my neutered boy has going on. The girls smell like really good tortillas. I remodeled their cage yesterday using cooling racks from the thrift store as platforms and a ladder, and bought them a bunch of new fruit-flavored chews, a bone, mealworms, and went a little nuts in the bulk section at a grocery store getting them some grain mix. They went NUTS over the mealworms, all sniffing around n' poo poo like mongoose...s. Mongeese? Anyway, it was rad watching them go all predatory. So at the pet store they have "edible furniture" for small animals, mostly made out of honey and alfalfa, but the ingredients said it also had pine shavings in it. Am I correct in thinking that'd be just as bad as pine/cedar bedding?
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Feb 17, 2011 03:05
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I took Tegan, Moose, and Zinc outside to enjoy the sunshine today. At first they were a little apprehensive.   But soon began exploring after figuring out that dandelions are kind of delicious.  Zinc spent most of his time trying to clean the filthy nature off of himself.  Moose quickly realized there are way more bad things to do outside, like digging in the garden.  The face of evil.
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Apr 17, 2011 22:15
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polyfractal posted:Haha adorable pictures Tegan and Moose are girls; Zinc's a neutered boy. There is some gender difference in that the girls are way more active but I think yours are just still in the process of being socialized. I've had them for almost a year and this was the first time I've let them run around outside, so they stuck fairly close to me, with a few brief expeditions. In my room, they go crazy - but that's because they've already explored every inch of it and know there's nothing dangerous. When I first got them they would hide under my dresser when they got tired and not come out, but someone here gave me the fantastic advice of picking them up a lot when they're playing and that ended that. Now I'm their "home base" and if something startles them, or if I call them, they run to me instead of some dark cranny where I can't reach them. I would never ever have let them roam outside when I'd only had them a month, because they just weren't that bonded to me yet. Pick 'em up, tickle them, give them raspberries on their tummies, give them little treats when you open the cage and when you put them back, and they'll love you.
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Apr 19, 2011 07:22
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I use scrapped old terry cloth towels and I don't bother attaching them anymore because the little shits figure out quickly how to detach them. Binder clips sound like a really good idea though. The towels plus a litter box in the corner keep the cage acceptable for maybe a week.
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Apr 24, 2011 04:57
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Near as I can tell, my rats were born sometime this month, so I celebrated their first birthdays with mine and took cruddy cellphone pictures. I made them a special dinner: a salad, spaghetti with mealworms, and a shotglass of coffee with milk and sugar (since they always steal sips of mine).  We also shared a mooncake, and the girls got a few sips of flat beer. (Zinc abstained. He also turned down the offer of cake at first; I think he was suspicious of all the hullabaloo and thought I was fattening them up for dinner.) Please pardon Moose's lack of headwear, as the pet store was out of miniature party hats.  I gave them some crickets, too, but didn't get any pictures as I was too busy catching the crickets and holding them for the rats (*crunch* ughhhhh) because they didn't want to bother chasing them down. And I got them a hanging refillable skewer thing with chew blocks and apple wood sticks but of course they completely ignore it even though I told them it's very valuable and not to chew on it. Happy birthday, you little shits.
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May 22, 2011 00:15
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I got my rats crickets for their birthday and they were big dummies and wouldn't catch them in the cage, I figured because of their relatively poor eyesight or something. So, instead, I let them crawl into the plastic bag o' crickets. It was a massacre So far at a little more than a year old, none of my three have had any health problems beyond a little wheeziness now and then which goes away if I turn the heat up or give the wheezer a little coffee. Sometimes their unusual vigor combined with all the stories about pneumonia and cancer worries me, like they're going to hit a year and a half and start growing gargantuan tumors or something. Has anyone had rats that were healthy their entire lives and died just of old age?
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Jun 19, 2011 22:14
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Xeras posted:I need some dietary advice for my rat. He won't eat lab blocks, he won't chew on anything that would grind his teeth down. What can I get him to work on his teeth? Bones, definitely. Mine ignored all the "fruit flavored" wood blocks I got them but they love apple wood sticks. Almost as much as they love chewing on my dresser
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Jun 29, 2011 00:39
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Hot day, time for frozen pea bobbing.    Zinc's the fattest so he's the only one that stands still long enough to get a picture
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Aug 22, 2011 00:39
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I found a lump under one of my girls' armpits. It's maybe the size of a pea; I had trouble telling if it was there or not because it's so small and squishy but it's definitely not there on the other side. I know logically that since she's young and healthy and it's small there's a good chance it can be excised and she'll be fine but I'm freaking out. I love these little monsters so much.
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Sep 13, 2011 17:38
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 11:21 |
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Rathen posted:Pretty common but you do want to keep a very close eye on it in case it grows quickly. If it does it needs to be out ASAP - but if it isn't growing it's not that big an issue at this point. Thanks. Nobody else can even tell it's there unless I show them the exact spot but it feels gigantic to me, so I'm going to get her to the vet by Monday if only for peace of mind.
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Sep 14, 2011 16:45
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