What is it with rats and human shoulders? Every pet rat I’ve ever met has been mad keen on climbing up there, not that I’m complaining.
The only thing I know about pet rats is from having one crawl on my shoulder once. All I remember is that its finger nails(?) were like needles and hurt like heck.
Are rats sensitive to cold? I remember gerbil sitting a pair in my room one night when I was a young teen. They were just in a cage by my bed. My bedroom was in a mostly unfinished basement and had no heat. Upon waking the next morning, my two charges were dead, apparently frozen to death! :eek:
What’s this business about them dying horrible deaths?
My eldest son had a pet hedgehog once. Interesting from an evolutionary perspective … a very primitive mammal, not so much changed from their ancestors that scurried beneath dinosaurs and hardly changed at all for over ten million. Brains, as one of his hedghog books put it, with a notable lack of convexities. Not much brain power but genius at toxin management. They eat almost anything and are resistant to many toxins … they do however chew the toxins up and froth it out coating the tips of their spines with it.
Apparently prone to throat cancer which is what killed my son’s pet.
Can’t recommend it as a pet. Might as well have a pet scorpion in my book.
Thanks to everyone for all the information and particularly for the offers from CrazyCat and Miss Elizabeth. Between the poop and the cost and the grumpy, think I’ve been talked out of getting one.
What my son would really like is a cat, but unfortunately it’s his parents not him that are allergy-stricken. I might ruminate on the rat idea for a while, but it seems a poor second to a kitty. 
Um. I’m not sure whether to recommend it, but there are cats with no fur. They look kind of odd.
Cat allergies aren’t necessarily reacting to the fur; sufferers often react to skin flakes, proteins in saliva, etc. There’s no way to tell what part of an animal one is allergic to without testing.
The one thing that I can contribute and you might find helpful is that people have told me they much prefer gerbils to hamsters because most rodents (including hamsters) do not have any urninary bladders and so they are always leaving a stream of urine anytime they mover.
Gerbils are very different in that they come from an extremely arrid environment and so they hardly ever drink any water and so they hardly ever urinate or at least they only urinate a very tiny amount. This makes them much cleaner than hamsters and much less likely prone to spread disease.
I believe this is the reason people do not generally keep mice or rats as pets. It’s because they are contstantly urinating and leave a tiny stream of urine whenever they walk anywhere.
That makes them very prone to spread disease.
Funny, if that is true, people in general should be taught this from a very early age.
I would guess that gerbils are therefore much better as pets than hamsters. But I’m not certain.
Good luck.
Mouse or Gerbil, which makes a better pet?
Gerbils are better. Mice are small, fast, and harder to tame in my experience. Gerbils are nice, smart, and they tame pretty easily with the right care and owner. You would prefer a cage because tanks do have good circulation of air. Cages are easier to clean because they aren’t as heavy and they can be disassembled for cleaning and come with almost everything.
Mine was. My mom was allergic to cats. So I loved my rat. He was friendly and fun. He liked to sit on my shoulder and hang out with me.
I work in biomedical research and have dissected countless mice and rats, some rabbits, a few guinea pigs- and I have personally viewed the bladders of these animals. Mice definitely have bladders- all mammals do, actually.
It’s true that many rodents communicate to other rodents and mammals via marking with urine, and it’s true that gerbils are an exception in that they are desert animals and produce very little urine. But in the spirit of fighting ignorance, all rodents most definitely have urinary bladders.
An other “Hypoallergenic” feline is the Siberian, my sister has three little girls who are all allergic to cats, but they really wanted cats. My sister found a breeder and to check the allergy levels they sent the breeder t shirts from the girls… the t shirts were left on the cat’s cat beds for a week and returned to my sister.
Nobody had even a mild allergic reaction, so the girls got cats.
Some bengal cats are pelted and are thus very low allergy.
http://www.petmd.com/cat/wellness/evr_ct_hypoallergenic_cat_breeds
Rats are very sweet and rather hardy. But they only live for a couple of years.
That’s a great idea, so I did some quick searching. Siberian kittens cost $800 to $950. :eek: Oh and just $2,500 for the Bengals.