I have a RAT!

[AkashaM]

She is so cute! Sh is only a white feeder rat but I hav savd her from an untimely death!

Sh pissd on my kyboard and now my "e" ky dosnt work, lol.

I was looking at info on gambian pouchd rats. Too bad thy are bannd b/c of th- monkypocks scare. Thos rats ar BIG!

Does anyone here hav rats as pets?

[Crow2]

LOL! I thought this was going to be about have a rat in your house, the pest kind. Haha..

My friend took in two girl rats that someone threw in the trash in their carrier. They are so CUTE, they are brown and white and love cheesits.

She hides them in their cage and the little things will go nuts looking for them.

[vmurphy252]

^I had a picture of Jimmy Cagney in mind...

[Fenriswolf]

He, I just doubled my numbers from 5 to 10. They are awesome! How's your rat so far? Feeder rats tend to be skittish and never quite as sociable and curious as normal domestic rats.

I would advise getting another girl to live with her as rats are both noctural and very social so need the company to stop from going a bit nuts. Lucky she has a nocturnal mum though.

It's best to get a good rat food like lab blocks, not the crappy mostly-seed foods most pet stores sell, and feed fresh fruit and veges every day. They're really fun to give scraps, everything excites them, and they can eat pretty much anything (including chocolate!)

They generally need their cage cleaned twice a week, or tidied once and cleaned out properly noce a week. Please don't use wood litters, especially soft-wood litters like pine as they're sensitive to the phenols in the wood. Paper cat litter is excellent for smell and shredded paper for fun!

It's always fun remaking their cage because they're so excited to explore the new configuration.

The downside to rats is that they're prone to respiratory infections and tumours (especially mammary tumours in entire females) and need comparitively large amounts of medication to treat it. They also last 2-4 years (4 is freakishly long) so it can be pretty depressing.

But have fun with her! I swear I'm not a crazy rat lady... compared to the people on the rat forum I frequent I'm entirely normal. lol

[AkashaM]

^^^
I had all kinds of rats wh-n I was young-r. Dumbos (my fave), blues, rex, sphinx mostly. They were so smart and friendly. I had them all traind, it was so cool!

This one I have now...yup very skittish. She likes to hide in my sleevs. She poops everywhr so I have been calling it "PM" for poop machine. Im trying to get her used to being handled.

PM is doing ok, but i think sh is sick...sneezes alot and makes wheezy sounds. Im pissd b/c sh seemd ok at th shop. Thy use cheap bedding for all of th small animals, so I wouldnt b suprisd if sh is.

Its hard to find good pet rats in nyc. The shops here only sell them as snake food.

[Toblerone]

hahah I had tonssss of mice when I was young. Like 40+.
My dad was involved in some lab experiment, and one day he brought my sister and I home 9 mice they'd used.
Mixed gender. I'm sure you can guess what happened with that one.

They were so friendly, though. The researchers had handled them a lot when putting them through mazes & such, so they were all used to being held and liked to hang out with us. Which rubbed off on their children, so we then had millions of mice that loved us.
2 males will fight if you stick them in a cage together, so my sister and I had the genius idea to rearrange cagemate pairs to encourage peace. They were basically all pregnant by the time my dad realised what we'd done, hahah.
We had to keep most of them in lab rat cages. We literally had bookshelves filled with mice.

a ghetto version of that was just going on in my basement.
It was far from ideal but we did our best, haha. We played with them constantly so they did get out of there, and they're really quite small so the filing system isn't as bad as it looks.
They climb around on the lids of those containers.

eep so cute I have to say I kind of miss them. One would be nice.
I wouldn't know where to get one now, though. Feeder mice kind of hate life/me.

haha sorry about the total tangent. you just gave me all these memories.

and jesus, looking back at that, my parents were amazingly good sports. That had to violate some health code.

[lilymiaomiao]

^ EAGHGHHHH!!!!! sSooOooOoOOO CUTEEEEE

[lilymiaomiao]

But I think rats are better than mice, really, they're so smart. I feel like rats like to do tricks and cuddle with you on the couch and stuff, and mice don't do that as much.

[Fenriswolf]

^^^
I had all kinds of rats wh-n I was young-r. Dumbos (my fave), blues, rex, sphinx mostly. They were so smart and friendly. I had them all traind, it was so cool!

This one I have now...yup very skittish. She likes to hide in my sleevs. She poops everywhr so I have been calling it "PM" for poop machine. Im trying to get her used to being handled.

PM is doing ok, but i think sh is sick...sneezes alot and makes wheezy sounds. Im pissd b/c sh seemd ok at th shop. Thy use cheap bedding for all of th small animals, so I wouldnt b suprisd if sh is.

Its hard to find good pet rats in nyc. The shops here only sell them as snake food.

Yay, cuteness! Pictures?

How weird that there are feeder rats but no pets! Go your flash rats though... in NZ we're not allowed to import rats (due to our primary native fauna being flightless birds and insects) so we mostly have inbred bitey mongrels. lol

Rats are definitely cooler than mice, but I've met the occasional mice who displayed personality. Haha. And that picture is pretty damn adorable!

[Djoser]

...now my "e" ky dosnt work, lol.

Does anyone here hav rats as pets?

Hah, my old HP laptop has a busted "E" key, sometimes it works but it's tricky.

This old house I live in has tree rats that come inside in the winter and live in the water heater closet, I was going to catch one and put it in a cage. Also I just saw a really cute white rat with red eyes at the Humane Society here.

I love the picture of the black mouse!

[AkashaM]

Hmm, my phon is acting stupid. I cant transfr pics, boooo!

Took my laptop to rpair shop...must rplac my k-yboard! waaaaaaahhhh!

[Guenevere]

My elementary school teacher always had all kinds of pets, her husband owned a pet shop. So we had snakes and I'll never forget feeding time!

I've always been a small rodent lover although I was more of a hamster person.

[Fenriswolf]

Ahhh, I forgot you were the person with no "e"s! Sadness. Still want pics eventually.

[Fenriswolf]

Hey! Pictures!