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We got our girls and brought them home yesterday! Trudy and Joan - Trudy is the black berkshire (and is supposedly a dumbo, but I can barely tell the difference) and Joan is the cream colored hooded.  It's almost impossible to get good pictures of Trudy because she's constantly moving. She seems to like us a lot already and will climb onto my hand and run a little up my arm before her ratty ADD kicks in and she has to go investigate the cage again. Joan is pretty shy still, though. She'll take food from my hand but is not so fond of being picked up or interacting too much yet. Trudy seems to really like exploring us outside of the cage, but Joan fear poops, so I guess we'll have to work on getting her to like us.  Mostly they spend a lot of time sleeping curled up together on the top shelf. They did start out with an igloo up there, but after they pushed it off and scared the crap out of themselves, I moved it to the bottom. They're not particularly interested in the hammocks yet either. I am glad that they're getting along, though Joan is pretty clearly the head
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Jun 27, 2010 23:05
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shadysight posted:I had a problem with my girls loving their top shelf home but pushing it off all the time. I ended up buying the kind of wooden bird perch that screws onto the bars and using that to make a little barrier to help prevent that. Awesome idea, thanks! Definitely something I'm going to try after they took a tumble in a tissue box again today. Took the girls out earlier and Joan, while she doesn't want to crawl all over me like Trudy, is happy with being petted and actually did the brux and boggle combo, which made me feel really good.  I actually do have a question that I haven't seen anywhere - the girls are being litter trained. I did a quick cage tidy today and there were no stray poops, so they caught on extremely fast! However, both of them like taking pieces of the Critter Litter to chew on. I don't think they're actually eating it, but should I be worried?
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Jun 28, 2010 03:42
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I am so in love with these girls. They've been sweet and nothing but fun so far.   Trudy is an adventurer. She's figured out that when I have the cage door open, she can climb around the outside of the cage. This includes squeezing in the tiny space between the wall and the cage.  We're a little worried that one of them could possibly be pregnant, because we went the pet store route since it was the only local option. They only had females in the store, but who knows how they were kept before that point. Joan has a bigger belly than Trudy and is a little more standoffish. Hopefully that's just a little chub and not a bunch of babies on the way. 
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Jun 30, 2010 18:11
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I think our old rats were just grumpy about the introduction of a new one - they're being fine and affectionate today, and there haven't been any tussles other than occasional squeaks at each other - no one has any bites or scratches. There weren't really any problems at all until we let the new lady explore the cage, so we'll just be keeping them separate with some play time together for a while.
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Aug 3, 2010 17:24
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This page needs more pictures.  That's Joan, who likes squeezing her fatness into the smallest spaces possible.  Trudy, the most adventurous one of the bunch and the only one who's currently allowed to free range since she comes when you call her.  Wrinkles is so ugly that she's kind of adorable. She's the weird one and the only one who uses the wheel.  Joan is a good rat friend and gives massages.  Everyone loves the ledge and wants to stand on it at the same time.  We have this really tall box filled with packing peanuts. Trudy climbs in it almost every day, panics and flails around trying to get out, then jumps back in after we rescue her. A couple of weeks ago Trudy took a flying leap off of the couch and hit her jaw on our coffee table. There was a little blood but she seemed fine immediately after, and started playing and eating again with no troubles. Over the course of the weeks she started developing a lump on her neck area and since it grew slowly we figured it was probably an abscess. Made a vet appointment for yesterday and it burst while Boco_T was holding her in her carrier in the waiting room.  I was at work, but he assures me that it was the worst smell possibly imaginable (but then I work at a daycare and have gotten baby diarrhea on my pants before, and I think that wins the smell contest).Anyway, we have to keep her separated from the other two until her wound closes up and keep her off the floor so she doesn't get dirt packed in there. We're also giving her baytril twice a day and a painkiller and flushing out the wound once a day. She hates the whole process and is just miserable right now.  We have to take her back this coming Friday because her face is swollen and they want to see if it clears up with the baytril, or if it's additional abscesses that will need to be treated. Our poor baby.
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Sep 11, 2010 20:18
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Thanks to Trudy's non healing abscess, I have the ability to say that I've been party to the removal of a pus plug from a wound. It had firmed up and had to be pulled out with tweezers.  We take her back to the vet tomorrow to find out if she needs to be operated on to fix the abscess that won't clear, or if the chloramphenicol we've been mixing with her baytril the past few days will knock it out. I'm pretty sure she hates us for all the drugs.
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Sep 19, 2010 23:41
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Superconsndar posted:It really isn't a big deal if you have to "settle" for pet store rats. The only difference between pet store rats and rats from a breeder is *usually* socialization. That's a big difference, but not one worth driving across several states or the country for. All three of our rats are pet store rats, and we went ahead with getting them after hearing everyone talk about what a dumb idea it is, because there are no breeders remotely in our area. All three of our girls are friendly, smart, and able to free range without getting into too much trouble. We took them all to the vet for checkups and our vet was amazed at how great their respiratory health is. Maybe they'll end up being tumor machines in their older age, since you don't get a health history guarantee with pet store rats the way you do with breeder rats (supposedly), but in the meantime I'm glad that we rescued the three of them from their tiny Pet Smart bins. Our hairless was actually there for a month after we got the first two, and we felt so horrible about her still being there that we scooped her up too. We would have gladly taken rats from an actual rescue as well, but there weren't any of those in the area either. I know buying from pet stores is considered supporting their horrible breeding practices, but at the same time I don't think the poor ratties who go through that system deserve to be left in the store forever without loving homes. 
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Oct 16, 2010 15:32
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We have a Martin's 680, but I've been wanting a little more space for our three girls. That has me seriously considering a CN, especially since the ladies are pretty good about using the litter box (or at least they were until I switched to Care Fresh and they got lazy).
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Oct 23, 2010 18:36
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After seeing how much someone else's rats loved a knitted hat, I sacrificed mine to the rats. Mom, this $1.50 hat is much better than any hammock you have ever painstakingly sewed for us! Oh, and September 10 was Trudy's first vet appointment about her neck abscess. She's been back 5 times since then because it keeps healing up then migrating to a new spot nearby. She's scheduled for surgery on Monday because the vet thinks it's getting dangerously close to her lymph nodes, on top of being stubbornly non-healing. I know surgery is risky, but I really wish we had done it earlier instead of paying $100 for every non-effective vet visit before finally going through with it anyway.
squidtarts fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Oct 23, 2010 |
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Oct 23, 2010 22:18
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The pee droplets are so tiny that I don't even really notice them unless they go right on my skin and then it's just a wipe with a tissue kinda deal.
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Nov 16, 2010 17:36
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It snowed today so we took a plastic box and filled it with snow and buried treats in it. Mom, this snowbox is too cold.
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Dec 17, 2010 02:01
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I saw the preview of that last night. While they were showing the rats swarming around a man in an attempt to evoke horror, all I could think is how cuddly that rat pile must be.
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Jan 5, 2011 00:26
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Does anyone have any experience with boarding their rats when they're out of town for a while? We're going on vacation in May for a week and we don't have a roommate to keep an eye on the girls any more. I think our vet can do boarding but we're gonna feel bad if they don't get to do any running around for a week, since they have at least an hour of free ranging every day with us. I don't think we have any friends nearby who'd be willing to check in and play with them.
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Feb 12, 2011 18:14
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We buy baby cereal treats (they're called puffed grains or something like that) and the rats go apeshit over them, especially the sweet potato flavor. As a bonus, they come in a plastic canister that shakes very satisfyingly and is a good "C'MERE RATTIES" sound. Baby treats in general are healthier than adult snacks. They also get some baby cheese doodles and the baby version of yogies, which don't have as much sugar and oils.
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Mar 25, 2011 21:58
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AHHHH, they're so ugly that I just want to snuggle them all and give them rat kisses. I make fun of Wrinkles for being gross, but double rexes get me every time with those curly whiskers and random hair patches.
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Mar 25, 2011 23:54
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FOREVER He's still adjusting - it takes a while and I'd tell you that you shouldn't worry, but it's hard not to I know. As for your drippy water bottle, do you have a soft plastic one or a hard glass one We started off with a chewproof glass bottle but it always dripped. Plastic bottles can be squeezed - fill it to the top and squeeze gently as you're putting the spout on, or give it a firm squeeze (enough to squirt a bit out) after you've got it put together and that should lower the drip by a lot.
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Apr 23, 2011 03:42
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We've used fleece and terry cloth, but like Boco_T said, it stank to high heaven and our ladies' favorite thing to do was chew them to bits. Back when I was unemployed I was fine with changing their cage every 3 days, but now that I work full time I do Carefresh and change the shelf liners once or twice a week instead. Supposedly sewing bottom liners with two layers of cloth and some quilting fiber between them makes them less stinky, but I never tried it. ... We totally push two weeks on our Carefresh sometimes. The shelf liners get most of the pee on them, so changing them regularly helps the smell the most.
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Apr 23, 2011 17:13
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And Wrinkles just chewed a huge chunk off my Crocs, but that's what I get for owning Crocs, I guess. First pair of shoes that is irresistible to rats.
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May 27, 2011 23:46
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Our Trudy stopped taking meds in apple sauce, yogurt, or even ice cream, so force feeding it is!
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Jul 21, 2011 02:01
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Old socks or toilet paper tubes filled with treats and hung up in the cage are like rat pinatas.
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Sep 9, 2011 12:26
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Our Wrinkles has had an infection for a while that's had her slowly bleeding out from her genitals. The antibiotics did seem to help for a while, but she's still bleeding and I can't imagine that she'll be able to last that way forever. She seems really weak but she does come out of the cage and play and is still eating treats and lots of baby food. Whenever she decides to stop eating we'll probably take her to the vet to be put down. Our vet was very sorry that there's no such thing as a rat blood transfusion. She's about 21 months old at this point, so she's had a pretty nice long life for a rat. What do you do with your rat when they die? We live in an apartment complex so I don't think we can just go bury her in the woods by our apartment or anything. I dunno if I can handle getting more rats after all three of our girls die.
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Nov 6, 2011 19:12
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One of my girls smells like corn chips, with maybe a hint of grape. The other two almost always smell like pee because their favorite thing to do is sleep on each other and pee the whole time. They're due for a rat bath.
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Nov 27, 2011 23:30
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Trudy had surgery AGAIN yesterday for that injury she got back in September 2010. It was a break in the skin on her neck that got infected and turned into an unhealing abscess and killed the root of one of her teeth. The first surgery didn't actually extract the broken tooth root and it's been creating problems ever since, which we tried to treat with antibiotics and by draining and cleaning the abscess. Tuesday night she started choking and did it again yesterday morning, so we rushed her off to the vet to see what the deal was. She decided that the abscess, which had randomly stopped draining a couple of months ago, had walled up a ton of gunk and was causing Trudy so much pain that she didn't bother to chew her food any more. Luckily they had an opening for surgery and it was a pretty simple extraction process (whyyyyy didn't they just get the thing out the first time they went in there?) and the incision didn't even require stitches. But now she has to sleep in the little travel cage all alone and we can't let her go scooting around the floor as usual since we don't want her wound to possibly end up infected. Poor lonely, bored rat. Before Tuesday we'd never had a rat choke before. Rat heimlich is really scary and no fun. I actually figured out that she was choking just because she went and laid down while everyone else was eating all the fresh veggies, which has never happened before.
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Dec 29, 2011 22:05
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To add to all the sick rat posts, it looks like my Trudy broke off the one tooth she has on the bottom, so we're giving her an omnivore diet supplement and will take her to the vet Monday. I guess because she only had the one tooth on the bottom it got to overused and just broke off.
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Feb 25, 2012 01:33
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Not quite two years after we got them, we had to say good bye to our first rat. Joan was always really fat, and it caught up to her in her old age. Her heart was working too hard and she started heaving to breathe yesterday, so we took her to the vet to be put to sleep. Been sobbing on and off since. I love our rats so much but I don't think we're going to get any more after Trudy and Wrinkles pass on too. It's too drat sad.
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Mar 19, 2012 22:17
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Chakattack! - fwiw, our rat Wrinkles had a similar problem - some mammary lumps that the vet wasn't too concerned about, and eventually bleeding from the uterine area. Eventually over 6 months that turned into a complete uterine prolapse that required a spay, because her tumor was pushing her uterus out of her body. Maybe see if the vet thinks a spay will take care of the problem and is a viable option? Wrinkles is almost 2 and we had hers done early this month with no problems, and she lived just fine from October to March with occasional trickles of blood until the uterus prolapsed. If you're really worried that she won't make it through the surgery, you can always do what you said as the first option and let her be until it becomes critical. In our case, our vet is very experienced with rats and they have a surgeon who handles lots of rat cases, so we weren't concerned about that part of it.
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Mar 31, 2012 17:23
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I have a litter tray that attaches to the sides of the cage (those little buttholes moved around and tipped over the old, unattached one) and fill it with the Petsmart brand of newspaper pellet cat litter. They used to be great about pooping only in the box when we used fleece, but with Carefresh it goes wherever and they use the poop box for fun food storage. 
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Apr 30, 2012 19:59
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I was browsing Craigslist while bored and happened to find a post from a guy who needs to rehome his two year old dumbo girl before he leaves for military stuff in June. I got really excited and jumped on it, because we miss having three rats, and our ladies are two too. I don't think I could take having babies again, but giving an older rat a home is great. Has anyone introduced older rats to each other? I feel like it probably will go smoother than introductions did when they were just 5 or 6 months old and hated having a new friend, but I could be wrong. Stardust's owner is bringing her by tomorrow to see how they get along.
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May 3, 2012 14:49
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I feel like a jerk for moving our rats to blocks (this was probably 6 months after we got them) instead of grains, but they are picky little things and most of the grains weren't getting eaten, while the blocks always get snapped up. They do get lots of veggies and the grains they do like for dinner every night, at least.
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Jun 26, 2012 04:26
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RazorBunny posted:We went into a Petco last night and they had the most gorgeous blue hooded dumbo rat. So friendly, too. And female We're down to just one last old lady rat. I don't really want more rats because I'm tired of my heart being stomped on when they die, but pretty girl rats are my weakness.  Very tempting to go scoop her up.
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Sep 30, 2012 16:40
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| # ¿ May 7, 2024 15:21 |
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The only time we had a problem with a fall was when our Trudy cracked her jaw on the coffee table on the way down. We thought she had just chipped one of her teeth, but it turned out the break was below the skin and it abscessed. Fortunately that was a rare freak accident and you’ll probably be just fine. Our other rats suffered worse falls with less trouble.
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Jun 14, 2018 14:57
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