The case of the screaming rat

I pulled out the nest, took the top off and had a word with the rats.

“Time to clean the cage and this nest” I said.

Trudy stared at me and whispered… “No… not… THE BOX!”

Oreo looked around. “But we don’t need it! Look, this bedding’s all clean, not a crumb!” she said, kicking some fluff over her stash. “Look, not a mark, beautiful yellow colour. So, y’know, thanks but...”

I stared. “The bedding is supposed to be white.” I pointed out.

Trudy reeled around clutching her chest… “The… BOX!” she squeaked.

Oroe squinted at me. “No I’m pretty sure yellow is much nicer.” she said, ignoring Trudy’s theatrics.

I picked them both up and put them into the carry case. Trudy rattled her little tin cup on the airholes. Oreo watched and looked for something to pee on.

Ten minutes of scooping and binning, water swapping, food bowl filling and  nest cleaning later, I opened up the carry case and extrated Thing One and Thing Two. “Look, it’s all clen and nice!” I said. Trudy looked it over.

“I like what you’ve done with the nest” she said, “Al that white makes it looks so much bigger but the ferret footprint motif somewhat detracts from the stylistic integrity” she notes. I’m not letting her watch the lifestyle channel any more.

Oreo peered at it, mouth full of hastily grabbed food. “All my work… undone” she sighed.

I petted her comfortingly. Then I thought better of it. “You smell like your bedding!” i said.

“And?” asked Oreo.

“And… Bathtime” I explained.

*splosh*

“BASTAAAARD!” said Oreo, spitting warm water. Then I towelled her dry and put her back in her nest to sulk.

“Ooh, is this a new game?” Trudy asked. I noted she was also looking slightly yellow…

*splosh*

And that’s when I found out that Trudy hates baths. I sat her with her feet on the bottom of the sink, with nice warm water around her and held her gently so her head was well clear of the water. And she screamed.

Me: “Come on Trudy, relax. Rats can swim you know.”
Trudy: “EEE! EEE! EEE!”
Me: ”I haven’t even dunked you or used shampoo!”
Trudy: “EEE! EEE! EEE! [pause for breath] EEE! EEE! EEE!”
Me: ”OK. Towel time.”
Trudy: “Mm. Well this is nicer but I’m never forgiving you.”

Public information announcement

Duct tape. Your rats will be fascinated by duct tape. But duct tape and rats do not mix.

Do not duct tape your rat

Seriously.

IT’s like *tug* SKREEK! *tug* SKREEK! “Hold Still” *tug* SKREEK!.

Next time I’m dunking her in warm water and shampoo for the afternoon, even if she does think I’m trying to drown her.

Pick me up!

Oreo was suspiciously eager to come out and play and be picked up this morning. A quick check of the weather report showed -4c temperatures (In Fahrenheit thats about "Learn Metric"). Even though the thermometer showed 15c, I think she just wanted me to hold her so she could warm her feet...

As per usual, Trudy was her usual friendly self, stretching out for some tooth purring and pets, until Oreo climbed under her.

Eyedrops

Does this sound familiar to you?

Me: OK I'll hold you here...
Oreo: The hell you will! *FLAIL*
ME: Holds still!
Oreo: [rotating 108 degrees inside her own skin]
Me: It's for your own good!
Oreo: [Attempts to climb out of her own arsehole]
Me: It won't hurt!
Oreo: [Blinking madly]
Me: I think some possibly went in 
Oreo: [Climbs into her nest and glares]
Me: Have a treat?
Trudy: leans in from out of shot, grabs the treat and runs off.
Me: …
Oreo: Even if you had another, there’s no way I’m getting out of this nest ever again.

Oreo’s eyes pt. III

The vet looked at Oreo. Oreo looked back. Quietly I whistled the intro from “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”.

“It’s conjunctivitis.” said the vet at maximum volume. I think she thought I was deaf. Then she proceeded to polish Oreo’s eyeballs with a water soaked piece of cotton wool.

Oreo was not amused. But she didn’t bite, claw or hiss at anyone.

She gets eye-drops every 12 hours, if I can ever persuade her to come out of her new nest and stop sulking. Trudy also wants to know why I am now so interested at peering at her eyes all the time.

Oreo also met a lot of random people, many of who said something along the lines of “Ugh!! Rats! Oh I hate rats! Oh isn’t she sweet!”

Oreo deigned to emit Kyootrinos* until we got back home. SHe may never forgive me**, especially when I start pinning her down and dripping eyedrops into her eyes.

* Kyootrinos along with Kyuons and the theoretical Fuzzy-Snuggon are jsut a few of the sub atomic particles of Cute. The long term exposure to a Kyootrino generator can result in buying MLP, or plush kitten dolls, and mis-use of the colour pink.
** Rats will remember an insult for hours, or until you make with the yummies and back rubs.

Oreo’s Eyes Pt. II

I got home with new rat food, rat litter and rat nesting type items. I looked into the carry case o’ isolation and…

Oreo had kicked all her bedding into the water bowl, crapped three times her own body weight onto the floor of the carrier and pee’d on anything she couldn’t fit into the water bowl. She was stood in the corner with her nose jammed into a vent possibly to get away from the smell.

I picked her out and she glares at me with mad shiny black eyes. Flawless mad shiny black eyes.

Yup. Not a blemish on them. I got slightly mauled trying to hold her to check.

Now I’m thinking that either whatever it was on her eyes has cleared up, or it was never a problem anyway – eye goo or a little gnawed up cardboard and Oreo just walked around with it on her eye for a day, then when I left her in the carry case, she washed it off or whatever.

I showed Trudy the new food. She picked out a slice of bean and then spent the next few minutes running around, nosing the new nest box while carrying it.

Rats: Lose 1d6 sanity points every turn.

Oreos eyes

Looks like Oreo has something wrong with her eyes. SInce a day or so ago, she’s developed large pale blemishes on both eyes. She’s now in isolation in the carry case so she doesn’t spread it around. You can assume she’s thrilled. I’m going to get her in at the Vet ASAP.

Bathed the rats

They hated it.

The great escape

I accidentally left the cage door open. 12 hours later, Oreo was still perched int he ipen door, staring wildly around, and Trudy had escaped to freedom.

Where “Escaped” means Oreo pushed Trudy off the edge of the cage or something, because I don’t think Trudy would have jumped on her own.

Trudy found the bag of treats, inhaled half, left a truly epic pile of turds, located a pile of dirty laundry, climbed in, chewed up a shirt and went to sleep.

Fortunatley it was an old shirt. I’m sure she’s probably nibbled her way through some other prized possessions, wires, priceless antiques, etc.

So I de-laundried her, turned her upside down and let Oreo* maul her for a bit.

*Where “Mauled” is equal to “Sniffed then stepped on in order to run up to  one shoulder”.

Moar Rat

Well the girls a re a lot bigger now. They’re still weirdos though.

They refuse any bedding that’s not a paper towel or sheet of brown paper, they won’t use the hammock they’ve been bought and the playpen? No. Not happening. Especially now they’ve worked out they can just jump out of it.

Oreo is becoming less sociable. She’s better at being picked up but has started peeing on everything and crapping while shoulder surfing.

Trudy on the other hand continues to be a model rat. She snuggles, she comes out to play, she’s nice about being picked up – she doesn’t lunge and grab for food, pee on clothes or drop rat turds outside the litterbox.

however if I have both girls out, Oreo spends all ehr time following Trudy, nosing under her, pushing her, stepping on her, making her squeak. I had wondered why apropos of nothing Trudy has suddenly taken up shirt diving – turns out she just wants to get away from Oreo.

I have Trudy out on her own now. So far she’s cuddled up for petting two or three times, sat and groomed, had a run around and even curled up and napped without leaving any wet spots. If Oreo had been out, she’d have run over and pushed Trudy around the moment she settled.

So I’m not going to let Oreo shoulder surf any more. That and the dozens o scratches on my hands and arms where Oreo has casually sunk her claws in while scrabbling around, the nibbled holes in my hooded top and the way she likes to hold onto my pony tail and swing around or lunge and grab for treats in a manner that’s nearly resulted in perforated fingers suggests she’s not into  being friendly.

That said I did get the pleasure of watching her fall into her water bowl the other day. That and the way she stuffed a food pellet into her mouth and then got all frantic because she wouldn’t put it down, but also couldn’t then pick up another piece of food…

The rats are starving

I know they are. They tell me so.

Trudy: You forgot to feed us.

Oreo: We haven’t eaten in days!

Trudy: We’re wasting away!

Oreo: See, our food bowl is empty… You’re so cruel to us *snif*

Cupro: I can see your food bowl is empty…

Trudy: [With mouth full] We affen ad any food fer agef.

Oreo: [Lies in bed and quivers feebly] So… hungry…

Cupro: [looking at huge pile of stashed food with a small piece of bedding draped over the top]
I see… And what happened to all that food I gave you half an hour ago, which I hand fed you, for lo, you are a pair of lazy rats who won’t play in the playpen I made you, and consequently are turning into fat little so-and-sos?

[Trudy & Oreo contrive to look innocent]

They lie though their pointy teeth. Teeth I might add, which they wear down on the gnaw toys they have, in between gorging themselves on the food they claim they don’t have and the treats they demand.

In fact, Trudy’s put on a sudden growth spurt and is larger than Oreo. She#s well on her way to being a squishy tubby ratty. Oreo may spend all day in bed, but I suspect that just gives Trudy time to eat Oreo’s dinner.

DO Trudy and Oreo snore?

No.How do I know? Trudy is sleeping with her head tucked under my ear and Oreo is asleep, using my hood as a hammock, and neither of them are snoring, even slightly

Yeah, it’s cute. But if Oreo is marinating my hood, I’m putting her in the shower.

The hoody

I put on my Wisconsin Badgers hooded top. Trudy has declared it the best thing ever and has taken up residence in the hood, whether it’s up or down, and doesn’t seem inclined to ever leave. I think Oreo’s been spending a little too much time kicking her out of the nest and otherwise leaping up and down on her.

The Rat Pen

Trudy hates new places.

And now for something not very different

Vermintrude curled up apparently sitting on her own head while napping. Oreo behind her eating one of the ratfood nuggets form the quite impressively huge stash they managed to hide under a piece of paper.

I have real bedding for them but they tend to kick it around and ignore it. Show them a scrap of brown paper or some paper kitchen towel and they’re in ratty heaven. The glee with which they dash around, dragging it all back is a wonder.

Oreo is so keen to build her nest that often she doesn’t wait for Trudy to move first.

Counting my rat’s nipples

So there I am, trying to tempt a rat into climbing up the bars so I can see if she has nipples.

If you’re a rat owner you know why. For everyone else, the reason is that Oreo is looking suspiciously like she swallowed a pingpong ball. I think she might be pregnant. She’s been getting moody, she’s been wolfing down food, she doesn’t like to leave the nest unless there’s nesting material around in which case she’s manic. Also I’ve had them just about three weeks, about right or Oreo to have been knocked up and about to produce a litter… in fact it’s about the last practical date. Any longer and I can safely assume she’s just a fat moody so-and-so.

And if she is pregnant, her nipples should be showing. Maybe.

So there I am… trying to see her nipples. I feel like such a perv.

Rat stuff

I mean “stuff” as in “Stuff to put in the cage”.

Toys mostly. a ball that drops treats a mini Kong or doing the same. a jingle ball… and a carrier box to put them in when I need to move tehm around or simply clean the  cage.

Oreo poked the jingle ball and treat ball and went back to bed.

Trudy ignored them. I tried the mini ring size rat groomer… they loved it, but only insofar as they seemed to want to eat it.

The carry box? Oreo sat in a corner and looked mildly perturbed. Trudy wigged out. I mean she was scrabbling and chewing and clawing at the lid to get out. I’ve never seen her so freaked.

Let sleeping rats lie

Trudy just draped herself across the back of my neck and went to sleep with her chin on my shoulder… and my camera is upstairs so I can’t get a picture…

I’m not letting them go to the cinema any more.

It warps their tiny fragile minds.

Did she fall or was she…

Pushed. Oreo just pushed Trudy off the upper ledge. It’s not a far fall and the landing as if not soft, at least yielding.

I knew I shouldn’t have let them name each other as beneficiaries in their life insurance policies.

Rat update

Well apart from my mother turning out to be Queen of the Rats, with the ability to stick her hand in the cage and make the secret rat summoning signal which cause both Trudy and Oreo to wake up, leave the nest and come and be BFF, sit on her shoulder blow kisses, etc. the big news is that Trudy is manic to get out of the cage and explore.

I mean manic. Every time I go in she’s rattling her little tin cup on the bars and shaking the door. When I open it she hardly ever takes a treat, she wants to be OUT.

Which is hilarious because I let her climb up to the top of the cage and Oreo loses her mind – she scampers around frantically and follows Trudy from the inside. Eventually Oreo works out how to climb out and then I have both scampering around the top of the cage.

After that it’s rat snuggling time.

Trudy likes to cuddle up after some scampering and do some teeth grinding, which is nice. I’ve only had them a bit over a week and a half but I’m worried they don’t have enough to gnaw on, so today I bought them a little edible alfalfa log  to chew.

I also bought them a rat sized explore-ball. One of those hollow plastic things you insert your pet into so they can run around your sadly un-rat proof house and be entertained.

Unfortunately half the clips that hold it together are missing so it will have to be returned. Once it’s back I can let Trudy run around a little more.

Handing stuff to my rat

Trudy, who has now discovered the joys of Stuff Outside The Cage is pretty much banging on the door. She’s desperate to explore.

In fact I assumed she wanted treats so I popped open the door and she leapt out, I handed her a cornflake… and she ran in, then came back. Odd. Normally she sits in the cage and eats. But now she grabs the cornflake and takes it off, then drops it and comes back. Oreo is delighted. She’s hoovering up all the loose cornflakes and running off to snack.

I recall Tserisa Zlatorbitek-Peledragon saying she handed her rats various objects and they scuttled o to stash them so I wondered i Trudy was trophy hunting.

I got a penny and two large glass fake gems – too big to swallow  and some cornflakes and let Trudy take her pick. She tried chewing a gem, then dropped it. She grabbed the penny and took it bac to her cage though.

New theory. She wants something to chew and for some reason doesn’t like the wooden stick that was in the centre of her hanging treat stick.

Cleaning day

The procedure should be more or less like this:

1. Chase all vermin to their nest.
2. Remove wire cage
3. Pick up Nest and empty contents into box.
4. Scoop out cage
5. Add new lining of cat litter
6. Replace rats.

Actually it goes more like this:

1. Rattle tube. Trudy looks out and goes “Yyyyyyyyes?”.
1. Rattle tube some more. Rat clings on for dear life.
2. Blow into tube. Rat moves and begins to wash her ears.
3. Various blowing rattling and tapping activities to no avail.
4. Start pondering some sort of rat poking activity.
5. Rat leaves and heads to nest under her own steam.
2. Examine cage. Unclip our retaining latches, and remove wire half.
3. Pick up nest and…
• Two rattie pink noses stick out from different holes.
• Start juggling nest around to try and keep them in until box is ready.
• Tip nest.
• Shake gently.
• Shake firmly
• Rat leaps out of top of nest.
• Try and catch rat one handed and guide her into box while attempting to evict other rodent
• Try and catch other rodent as she tries to escape, while holding nest and trying to prevent first rat from exiting box which she is levering open.
• Think “Airholes, knew I’d forgotten something.”
• Put one huge airhole in box lid, because it’s so funny to see the Vermin sticking their noses out.
4. Scoop cage.
5. New cat litter
6. Open box, have conversation with rats:

Me: All cleaned!
Oreo: You have defiled the sacred land of our ancestors!
Trudy: The spirits of our ancestors who were buried there will curse you!
Me: Actually guys, I think you’ll find the only thing buried in there was about 8Kg of rat poo.
Trudy: I’m still cursing you.
Me: The only curse you know is “Squeak”.
Oreo: He’s got you there.
Me: Surprise rat snuggles!
Oreo: AHRG! Jings!
Trudy: BEGORRAH! AIEE!

Thirty seconds later, Oreo was curled up washing her whiskers and getting pets and Trudy was laid on my arm bruxing. After ten minutes of playing and petting I put Oreo and Trudy back in the cage. Trudy immediately climbed back out so I picked her up, and she came and sat on my shoulder and stuck her nose in my ear.

In fact I put her back a few times and she seemed so eager to come out and play I ended up letting her out several times, and yes, she really does seem OK with being petted and even handled now.

Actually I put in a new swinging treat stick and she practically climbed on my hand to see what was up. A good sign, I think. Oreo’s still pretty sulky though but eh.

More rat oddity

Oreo is in a bit of weird a weird mood.

I walked in an hour ago and she had her head sticking out so I waved a cornflake at her... no reaction. So I bapped her on the nose with it. No reaction. So I tickled her chin with it. No reaction. Finally she just sort of went "You want me to hold that?" and grabbed it lightly. Then just sat here staring at me with a cornflake hanging out of her mouth.

Also I took up a “Near UV”" blue light – it’s like a UV light but it’s just… really blue. It makes stuff fluoresce, but kids can’t use it to turn their eyeballs into lumps of pale white goo. I wanted to see if it would make rat pee light up. Mostly because I was bored but it occurs to me it’d make it easy for me to see which corner they picked as their toilet.

Anyway it didn’t work but it turns out Trudy fluoresces white when lit up. Yeah. I have a fluorescent rat. JEALOUS YET?!

Rat fail

Trudy likes to sleep in the tube that goes from the first deck to the top deck in her cage. I pop in to check on the raties a fair amount. Once they wake up I generally go sit with them but I don’t like to go wake them up by cluttering around.

This time I peeked in and saw Trudy on her belly, asleep in the tube and as I watched, she slooooowly slid down the tube on her belly and WHANG! –Smacked into the bars of the cage.

Great. I thought she’d killed herself or broken her nose, but apparently she’s dragged enough torn up paper into the tube as bedding that she only got startled.

That said I think she blames me. She was definitely glaring a little…

Rats in motion

Oreo's still skulking, but Trudy has wrapped her tiny mind around the concept ofbeing hand fed with aplomb:

Oreo is starting to get the idea but she is hampered by Trudy's new hobby: Leaping off the top of the nest, onto Oreo's head and from there to my hand where she demonstrates her ability to hoover up half the treats in one pass.

Rat snuggling

There’s a joke. It goes like this:

Q: How do you know if someone has ADD?
Reply: I don’t know, how do you know if someone has ADD?
Punchline: Wow, let’s go ride bicycles!

Ok, so now I’ve set the tone, I actually managed to pick Oreo up. Mind you, she wasn’t too pleased and lodged several objections. It pretty much went down like this:

Me: [Traps Oreo in the play pipe and uses it to extract Oreo from the cage] I have you now!

Oreo: Darth Big Scary Hand! I should have known!

Me: Come out of the tube!

Oreo: No you’re going to eat me. I shall escape. [Starts running from one end to the other to find one end that doesn’t have a big scary hand nearby]

Me: I’m not going to eat you!

Oreo: [Leaps out of one end of the pipe, goes “AAAAAAAAH!” and runs all the way back in as I pick it up, then comes zooming out the top end, where she’s picked up]

Me: Worst escape ever.

Oreo: AAAAAH! I’m gonna DIE!

Me: [Gently stroking as Oreo runs around like mad] No, seriously, just calm down…

Oreo: Aaaaah! Aaaaaah! Aaaaaah! Ooh, this is nice *snuggle*.

Me: That’s it?!

Oreo: What’s this? What’s that? Hey, that looks interesting! Ooh! What’s this? More pettinz! What’s that?

Me:  Tomorrow I’m buying you some Ratalin.

Oreo did calm down and when I came to put her back in the cage, she even clung to my hand a little. Once she was back in, she didn’t run and hide out and even went back to playing with the tube. She seemed a lot less skittish and in turn, Trudy calmed down too.

However, while she’s quite happy to come and snarfle treats from an open palm, she still doesn’t want to come out and play again, and I couldn’t trap Trudy with the same trick when I tried.

The Penthouse Suite

There are three levels to the Rat cage.

1. The bottom where all the poo happens, and where the cardboard tubenest is, and the play tube
2. Mid level platform, where the food bowl is. From there to the top platform, is a tube.
3. Top level. Nothing much here right now, because the ratspush everything off onto each other's heads from up here.

I put in some brown paper folded into a bag for the girls to play with, chew, tear, hide under, use in the nest, etc. Trudy immediately started hanging out of thetube and tried to drag it in with her.
It seems that she's decided all the tubes in the cage are nest areas - she's often found curled up in the top tube.
I'm not sure what makes them move up there - maybe the other nest gets too warm, maybe Oreo irks Trudy who goes off to get some peace, and Oreo comes looking for her in case there's food or she just wants a snuggle...
This time I caught them settling down an took a few snaps:

Oreo the bully

Trudy was running around last night so I gave her a little nibbly treat. She scampered over to the far side of the cage to eat it... and Oreo came zooming out, grabbed it and hid out in the nest to eat it.
Clearly Oreo is the dominant one... And abit of a bitch.

Not bitten yet

Everything I’ve read, everyone I’ve talked to has said at some point the same thing:

Yer gonna get bit.

Rats, having poor eyesight and good noses will eventually mistake a finger for a treat or get irritated enough to give a “Feck off” nip, or they’ll get playful and apply some fang.

OK, well, not happened yet. Oreo and Trudy are pretty mellow. Even when grabbing a treat they’re quite polite about it – this is lucky because Trudy thought my thumb smelled like something I was trying to feed to her and tried to basically pick my thumb up in her mouth to take off and eat.

Oreo did something similar a little while ago. Either I had something nice on my finger or she was letting me know I was in her space and to vacate because she tried to get her teeth around my fingertip three times.

I’m guessing it wasn’t a threat nip because if she wanted me bit she didn’t have to go so slow about it.

Eventually they’ll catch me though and I’m not looking forward to it.

Many of our Bothan spies lost their lives for this…

Or, given the look in Oreo’s eye, they’re about to…

“You woke me up for this?”

Trudy in soft focus

Evidence that Trudy isn’t the sharpest pencil in the box

A friend of mine with a lot of rat experience suggest that giving the rats gentle touches  - brief strokes so they wouldn’t have time to get anxious – would get them used to being handled.

Well so far I haven’t managed to pick either of the girls up and I think they’d be a little twitch about me trying, so that seemed like a good plan.

I was hanging out, reading and I noticed that Trudy had stuck her head into the best but most o her rear was sticking out. So very gently I reached in and used a fingertip to lightly stroke.

No response.

So I did it again.

No response.

At this point I thought “OK, let’s go for it” and started stroking gently, petting. And after a few seconds she started Bruxing – little rat purrs. A few moments after that she must have wondered who was petting her if Oreo was in front of her and turned around to see what was up.

Every so often I catch her with the same trick and it always takes her a few seconds to catch on.

Oreo

Oreo worried me. She didn’t seem to want to come out of the nest and I was becoming concerned that she wasn’t getting food or water, or that she was ill.

So I set up a rat-cam.

Turns out she just didn’t like coming out when I was around.

The rat cam showed her scampering around, sniffing at interesting things, climbing, digging for food, drinking, playing banjo… and so on.

In contrast to Trudy who is quite happy to pose for the camera, it’s taken several days for Oreo to decide that I’m probably not going to eat her. Her dark fur and the lighting also tends to make it harder for me to get a picture and I don’t want to use the flash on the girls…

Observation shows that when Oreo’s awake and I’m quiet enough for her to think I’m not around, she’s actually pretty active. Especially around food. Watching her strip the seeds from the hanging treat bar has been an education, and leaving the cage door open shows that she’s actually the less timid of the pair when it comes to exploring.

 

She’s also finally relaxed enough to take a treat from my hand, though he still scampers away and hides to eat it.

I think she bugs Trudy a little. They wake at different times and Oreo seems to like to pounce and wrestle Trudy – I caught Oreo following Trudy, with Trudy’s tail in her mouth once… I suspect Oreo might be waking up and then waking Trudy up, which is why I often find Trudy has gone and found another place to sleep.

Oreo’s skittishness is also a problem. She’ll often panic dash for her nest when she decides there’s something scary going on, and the sudden rush makes Trudy panic because she thinks maybe Oreo knows something she doesn’t.

On the other hand, Trudy keeps trotting in with treats and Oreo wants some of that too, so she’s starting to get a little more open to the possibility that not running away will in some way equal food, which is increasingly the case.

Trudy

Trudy was the first to get comfortable with leaving the nest, possibly because Oreo is a bit of a bitch. More on that later. This is Trudy on the second day:

I tried to tempt her with a little food but she froze, and not wishing to frighten her I just dropped it.

After a while I realised that most of the problem came from the sound the cage makes when the door’s unlatched – the entire thing rings like a bell and sets the girls on edge. Though now they’re more used to it they’re starting to be a little more blasé…

In fact, this is how I found Trudy just yesterday as I was walking past…

She was curled up in the open on the top deck of her cage. Just in the background you can see one of the play tubes. I put in some paper an she tried to make a nest in it. Right now there’s three points that are set up as nests.

The beeping of the camera woke her up a little, and here she’s giving me a look in case I’m about to do something annoying like grab her or rattle the cage or anything not involving handing food over…

I think Trudy likes to get away from Oreo, either because Oreo drives her out every so often, or because Trudy just wants some peace and quiet. I tend to find that wherever Trudy has decamped to, Oreo will eventually turn up, curled up against her, and they still share the straw nest a lot.

Trudy was the first of the girls to come and take a treat from my hand though she still carries it back to the straw nest before she starts eating, although she’s stopped carrying the treats inside.

The Trip home

The trip home is where things didn’t go to plan.

I called a Taxi but the driver seemed unable to wrap his head around the idea that I had two live animals. First he insisted that the carry boxes be put in the boot of the taxi, and then he tried to tip the cage on it’s side with the rats inside.

Twenty minutes of pot-hles, speed bumps, and sudden braking later, I was home.

I set the cage up, put the boxes inside and added the cat litter, toy house, a little bedding in a pile and a little food: then opened the boxes.

Inside each box was a terrified rat, huddled at the far end, surrounded by smeared crap from where they’d been thrown around. Immediately I felt terrible.

I left them to come out naturally. After an hour or so, Oreo had started to explore, so I took her box out. Trudy however remained in her box and Oreo moved in.

I really didn’t want the pair to start nesting in such a fouled box so when they showed no sign o leaving I tipped them gently out.

OK that might not have been the best plan if I wanted them to be relaxed, but it was done with the best of intentions. They holed up in one of the play tubes, and when I checked them using a red light* they had pulled in bedding and had curled up comfortably.

*From what I can tell it’s likely that rats can’t see red light or can’t see it very well.

The Cage

When I decided I wanted a pair of rats (I’d heard rats were sociable and didn’t like being kept alone), I talked to the shop assistant. She indicated that the smaller cages and the Habitrail type cages were no good.

“They’ll get stuck in the tubes” she said. There was a slightly dented, but very large gage on sale – the wires were bent in one corner but not broken. It had huge tubes in – big enough for me to it my arm through – and three levels to play with, so I decided it would do.

“What sort of toys should I get?” I asked.

“Something they can push around or chew on or hide under” the shop assistant, who was appearing increasingly knowledgeable told me. She showed me the rack of rat friendly toys, and I picked a T shaped cardboard tube play house thingy, that was wrapped in braided straw. I was assured that the rats would love it, as they could chew on it.

From there, a bag of rat food, and all in one pellet type was added, and a big bag of recycled paper kitty litter for the cage floor.

“You also get this Rat Starter Kit” she said and handed me a box which turned out to contain: A bag of food, a bottle of vitamins, a small book on caring for rats, a packet of rat treats and a bag of what would turn out to be paper based bedding.

She also suggested some ropes and rolling toys but I decided to wait and see what the new rats would be like.

The rats

I had a master plan. When it came to picking rats I’d let them pick me. So the cage was opened and Trudy scampered up to see what was happening, thus picking herself to be stuffed into a cardboard box. Oreo was picked because she’d been picked up earlier when I’d asked about rats and so I assumed she was at least used to being handled.

And then it was just a matter of traumatising the girls in a cruel and unusual way…

Who am I and who are the rats?

I’m just this guy, you know? On Friday, September 26, for no real reason I walked into a pet store, and walked out with a large cage, a bag of kitty litter, some food a play house, a “Rat Starter Kit” and two small cardboard boxes.

The boxes had holes punched in and every so often a little pink nose would poke out and wiggle.

Thus my two girls left their warm, comfortable pet-shop tank and their sisters. Things went downhill from there…

Oreo

Oreo is a black “Dumbo eared” fancy rat, with a white belly stripe. She doesn’t really like people (Meaning me, actually). She’s skittish and tends to run and hide when she hears strange noises or starts to feel insecure.

Ironically she’s also the first one to come and examine something new or climb out the cage door if it’s open.

I suspect her main interest is food, possibly because Trudy tends to get to the food bowl first… Ah yes;

Vermintrude (“Trudy”)

Trudy is a silver-white rat with a grey stripe along her back. That’s her in the banner. She’s quite relaxed, and I’ve caught her curled up asleep in the open at least once. She was the first to take a treat from my hand and if you sneak up on her, she quite enjoys petting until she remembers she’s supposed to be scared.

She’s generally the most active and the first of the two to get up and start sniffing around. Consequently she gets first dibs on the food…