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…