Pets - A third rat joins the family

I'm not sure what got into me, but I had the urge to own another rat. Back I went to Gumtree looking for baby rats, and I found a breeder that had a couple of gorgeous mink champagnes and I really wanted to have one!

My other choice of rat - the one at the front

So I went to her place and looked at all her babies and they were so cute! There were two I had my eye on - one had a great stripe down her back and the other was runt of the litter.  I ended up taking the runt, as she was so tiny and cute, and I named her Elsa.

I brought her home with a new cage in case she didn't get along with Diamond and Tyrael, but I didn't need to worry - they weren't aggressive to her at all, and she ran around the cage exploring and eating her little heart out from my home made food hopper - yep, using those McManus cubes!

Diamond and Tyrael are 4 months now, and the size difference between them is amazing - they look like giants compared to Elsa!  But after one night at her new home, her little belly was full of food and I don't doubt she will grow quickly.

The toilet training is NOT going well.  I tried keeping a litter tray of material different to their other stuff, but they seem to enjoy digging in it and tipping it out more than using it!  Perhaps what I should do is keep a litter tray that has litter in it, and everywhere else have NO litter.  I have been lazy with litter training lately, so I might have to start doing it again.

I ended up buying the McManus cubes and the rats think they're great - the one drawback is that the lot is infested with moths and their larvae so I keep having moths flying around in the bathroom, and inside the food bag.  I might have to look at it next time before I buy it, but it's lasting a while.  Like my little food hopper?  I got the idea from google - it's a great way to put the cubes so that the rats don't take them all and hide it all over the cage.  I spent a couple of hours weaving some wire into a lid for it so the rats didn't get in from the top, and its all going rather well!

New additions to the family

My daughter asked me for a pet goldfish, and I didn't want to get her a pet goldfish because they're not that fun to play with, having kept fish.  However, at the pet store I saw some rats and I used to keep rats before I had the kids and remembered how great they were as pets.  But, I wanted rats that were friendly, well socialised, and I didn't know if these ones from the pet store were friendly.  That, and they were all lumped together, so if there were co-sex mingling, I didn't want to bring home a pregnant rat.

So I went online to look for baby rats.  There were a few on Gumtree and after a few sms enquiries, I got one positive response, and decided to go look the same day.  The pet store they were kept in had girls separated from the boys, and there were only 2 left.  I put my hand in the cage to handle them to see what they were like and they were both friendly so I bought them both, and a new cage and a water bottle and set of home.

My daughter held the shoe box reverently for most of the way, and we stopped at one of the pet stores and I opened the shoe box and placed the box in their new cage whilst we went in to try and buy some litter.  When we came back to the car, both rats were out of the cage - they were still quite small and managed to slip through the bars and were walking on top of the cage, much to my children's delight.  I cringed a little as I saw their little hands trying to pick the rats up and though I put them back in the cage and set off home, they were soon out of the cage again, wandering around the car seats and keeping the children entertained.

I used shredded paper to line their cage as I didn't get the litter, and attached their water bottle, but I was unsure if they knew how to use it - my previous rat had difficulty learning how to use it so I hoped they would be ok.  I gave them some dry bread to snack on whilst they got used to their surroundings, and the children spend the next hour looking at them and trying to pat them.

They are both blue hoods, with imperfect pale markings on their heads - my daughter named one Diamond, and the other I named Tyrael  Tyrael has a large white patch on her head whereas Diamond's pale patch is much smaller and less noticeable.

The next day, hubby bought them a wheel, a cloth hammock tunnel and a strawberry house, and they seemed to take to that very well.  He also got the kitty litter, a paper based one, and used it to line the cage. I wanted to start toilet training them so he set aside a takeaway container and put the paper that they had from the cage before in it, and I moved all their droppings there - but they prefer to SLEEP in their toilet than poo in it!

I will go do more research on toilet training rats!