I still don't have pics of the other eleven, but that's because Beep has turned into the scariest thing ever...and I value me fingers. She used to be so sweet XD I can't wait til she's done with babies! I want my girl back!

anyways.
click to enlarge


This is my little Black Berk. girl. Still nameless :3


The Brown Berk. is named after his father; Neptune (we're pretty sure it's his. They're identical). We've named him Poseidon.



( Read more... )

Hey there !

My rattie Mozza, one year and four months, just won't take her medication. It's driving me crazy, I think I tried everything.

I tried to put the three drops on a piece of bread, into yogurt, soy milk, cheese, honey, anything... she just tastes it and pushes it frantically with her paws like "OGM that's disgusting !". I swear I just can't believe that, yesterday I tried to give it to her on a piece of meatball, I mean it's the kind of food for which they would usually prostitute, well Mozza ate the parts without meds and when she reached it she just stopped and pushed it with her paws.

And it's totally her because when there was a mix of honey, water and meds in a syringe the other girls wanted to lick it.

Also Mozza is a nervous rat we never managed to keep still so we can't immobilize her and put the syringe between her lips without hurting her, she moves too fast. *sigh*

Any other idea ? It's really pissing me off that she will keep on having health problems because madame doesn't like the taste of the meds !

lol I never should have given little bits of my 12 grain bagel with dabs of herb & garlic cream cheese to the rats. Now every time I come over to my computer area with one (they are right beside me)... they think I am gonna give it to them and they all line up along the upper big level of the FN and stare at me with occasional 'grabbipaw' motions. XD I just discovered the yummy of this treat and thought it'd be nice to share. lol

edit: Hot sauce + rats = amusing ... I came over with my shake n bake drizzled in cayenne sauce and they gave me the look... so I put some sauce on my finger and offered it. Without hesitating, they started licking. ... Then STOPPED and had silly "OMG WHAT IS THIS *gumgumgum*" expressions. Then they got over it and wanted more.

Soooo i just revamped pennys cage and lined it with fleece/velcro, which is funny because i was in the middle of doing it when i read the post a few down about that. What's the best liter box suggestion? I have a morphed ziploc container for now, but its so not good enough. i need something bigger for her to dig around in. I just don't want her gnawing on whatever i want her to poo in!
Another thing.. penny likes to piddle in the corner of her third floor area.. and it doesnt go straight down, it goes out the cage and on the surrounding floor. Is there anything I can put in the corners to prevent this? I was thinking some sort of metal squares or .. i have no idea. I just don't want to have to worry about putting plastic around the bottom of her cage anymore. :(

also:

Hi, Im Cob and I am new to having a rat of my own! Please be gentle, Im a lurker, first time poster ;)
This past sunday, I adopted a rat from someone who wanted to get rid of her. Avery was a pet store rat that was housed in a tank with 4 boys (What?!?) and is estimated to be about a month or so old. Her previous owner bought her from said pet store, and then he decided she could be pregnant, so he wanted to get rid of her. The previous owner contacted my older brother(who has 3 boys), who contacted me and I decided to take in Avery.

1. I know rats prefer to be kept in pairs. I acquired Avery alone, should I keep her alone or should I attempt to introduce her to someone new?

2. Avery to me, doesn't LOOK pregnant, (will post pictures soon) how can I tell besides going to a vet?(If there is anyway to tell. I have a vet I can take her to if need be of course!)

3. If she is pregnant, what the heck do I do? Take her to a vet? Have a separate tank for the babies? A month is really REALLY young to me, will she even make it through the pregnancy?

I am confident I can be a quality owner for Avery, as I had planned on adopting a pair of female rats when I could, but I know little about pregnancy, and my research has not seemed to help me out any.
I have Avery in a pretty large cage that used to house my friends 2 male rats. She has a wheel that she seems to have no interest in, a house that she loves, and a hammock that she is slowly adjusting to. She uses her litter pan, and her litter pan only, and will sit on my shoulder or on the back of my neck for hours while I do various activities! I will post pictures really soon!

Thanks guys! I love reading this community, your guys' ratties are so cute!

I've never really had an issue with people not liking my rats, apart from being amazed that they're affectionate/interested in people UNTIL today.
I'm at my in-laws and visiting for thanksgiving dinner are the parents of my future sister in law. My future sister in law turns to her mother (who is a psychiatrist) and tells her that I have rats, she looks at me with a blank look on her face& says, "and...what do you do with them?"..I'm all O_O 'umm..I play with them'.. she looks at me and says "well, I want you to check for information on hantavirus online. Will you do that for me?" so I tell her I will. I come on-line straight away to find out what this is all about and discover that it's carried by wild rodents.. not pet rats.
It just bothers me that she'd think that my pets would carry something so dangerous and that I'd willingly expose myself and everyone around me to that.
ALSO ALSO ALSO
I adopted a neutered male rat last Sunday, he's been on his own since then but I've been taking him out of his cage several times a day. Is it normal for him to just sort of sit there and let me pet him, to hardly move at all?
I'm used to girls, who are all over the place. He doesn't have any other symptoms of anything, no red gunk or heaving breathing. I know he's probably still adjusting to me I just want to make sure that boys are usually like this.
Thanks!

sleepy monty
Originally uploaded by omg.jessen


here's a monty...

Patent Pending.

she is such a good girl, hasn't pulled at her stitches or anything.

Monty just has a run of the mill URI by the way, I panicked and thought he had five seconds to live, but he's going to be fine.

I graduated from university with my BA in Psychology, and one of my presents was from my mother. A new rat cage! Just what I wanted! (Except I was expecting a cage for Christmas and not before...)

It is a "Prevue Small Animal Home with Stand"

http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2753643

It's the green "large" one, not the extra-large blue one.

And it works... pretty decently. I'll admit I had my parents put the bloody thing together which was NOT a fun experience. But the boys seem to like it and it's a LOT more space than the previous cage (which now houses Esther Bunny and her old smaller cage is now a spare one!)

I had difficulty figuring out what to do with the cage, since it has a grate/mesh on the bottom before the plastic pan (and the boys clearly didn't enjoy the feeling on their feetsies), so it was a choice of either take out the grate or figure out a way to cover it. So I took the "easy way out" and decided to cover it - with $2 plastic coated placemats! YAY! Easy to clean and pretty. And apparently not TOO tasty since Miles tried to eat one and has ceased doing so.

I bringeth pictures of course. I'm glad the bloody thing isn't any bigger, otherwise it would be a PAIN IN THE ASS to clean. This is about the extent of my patience to clean.

VOILA! Pictures under the cut, probably pretty big.

( The boys aren't entirely sure what to make of the new cage... )

http://nh.craigslist.org/pet/1446589645.html

People make me sick

Just a quick question, when your rats have out of cage time do they poop and pee while they are out? None of our rats do but the only other person i know who has rats all of hers do and she has 8 of them. I was just wondering if our girls were the exception to the norm or hers were. The weird thing is one of our girls is from an accidental pregnancy from her female rat.

Po is fine, but Monty developed a bad wheeze overnight.
at 5am, I rushed him to the same vet that treated Po.
The rat vet wasn't in yet so I had to leave him there for the day.

I'm just wondering if anyone knows what can cause what sounds like a very bad URI in a time span of just 4-5 hours.
He was also dehydrated and developed some diarhea, but he was still very active and eating and grooming.
I suspected he might have had a reaction to some mold but I'm not sure. What do you think?

god i hope he's gonna be okay -_-

I should post more often in this community really, seeing as I've got three ratties. Anywho


( Scuttle and I would like to say hello :) )

I adopted a neutered boy (he had testicular cancer and had everything removed almost 2 weeks ago) on Sunday. The owner of the rescue said that on this Thursday it'll be 2 weeks since his neuter and he should be fine to introduce to my girls then. None of my girls are spayed but 2 are almost two years old, one is younger and I know she comes into heat regularly because she often does that vibrating thing when I'm petting her. I'm just worried about her getting pregnant, I know it's very unlikely but I've never had a neutered boy before and I'm not really sure if 2 weeks is enough time.
Any ideas?

Good night, sweetheart.
Say hello to Kabuki for me.

I just thought I'd post one of my favourite videos of him... don't mind the shoddy camerawork; it was more or less to record his bruxing.

2 weeks after having to put one of my older girls Hookah to sleep I had to make the difficult decision to have my youngest put to sleep as well.

I had adopted Lilly and her sister Olivia from a friend who could no longer keep them. Lilly suffered from many respiratory infections that, although were treated, often came back after a couple months. She eventually was diagnosed with a lower lung infection and put on permanent meds. After moving 14 hours away from home to be a military wife I found a new vet. We got her x-rayed and had her stay at the vets to stay on oxygen and have a nebulizing treatment done. After seeing that nothing was really "helping" we decided to put her on heart meds to see if maybe she had heart disease.

10 days into her new treatment Lilly looked worse than ever. I finally saw that the her spunky, friendly, and outgoing personality was down to barely there. My heart is still breaking for her. I feel like i lost a battle i could never win. I wanted her to be well so badly. She was such a sweet rat.

( photos of lilly )

Hello!

( +3 )

I've found a gorgeous piece of artwork that is quite relevant to our interests.




full size version: http://0mri.deviantart.com/art/Rat-Queen-21083976

I want those pants...

Sauce: http://thedesigninspiration.com/articles/70-cutie-baby-animals-bring-your-a-good-mood/

Heya guys, my boys have one more package of Care Fresh before I give fleece a go - the timing couldn't be better as money is tight at the moment.
( questions and pictures )