Some of you may have eagerly been awaiting a follow-up to my recent thread entitled “My pet rat has lice.”
If you are in fact one of those people, I heavily recommend that you go outside more.
Anyway, today was Tweek’s follow-up vet visit. He’s still riddled with eggs, unfortunately.
So they shaved him.
And now I can’t help but laugh hysterically every time I look at my obese bald rat who is attempting to recover his dignity.
I’m terrible.
Oh, my. I can’t imagine anything rattier looking than a…well, a shaved rat. Poor guy.
Is he nice and warm? We had to put a heating pad into our rat cage when our Gloria took ill.
I hope the shaving takes care of the problem. Maybe you could knit him a little grey sweater, sort of like a rat toupee.
Best,
karol
Who’s my little bald rattie boy?? Who’s my little bald rattie boy?? You are! you are! You’re my little bald rattie boy!!
:ahem: Sorry. Hope your little bald rattie boy gets well soon!ahem I would like – no, I insist – that there be pictures of this naked rat.
katie1341, that was hilarious 
I’m sure it does not help that my girl and I have been making poodle jokes all night.
Oh dear.
Pictures! Humiliation of the critter is incomplete without.
Poor naked rat. I wonder what’s going through his little rat brain upon the shaving business.
Hey, that’s nuthin’! We’ve got rats at work that are totally hairless. Mice, too. They were originally bred for medical research.
At least your little guy will grow it back. I hope.
Seriously, you might want to ask the Vet about itching. I know freshly growing-in hair from a complete shave can be a special king of torture. (Don’t Ask. TMI) Keep an eye on him or excess scratching. It might be okay, though. One of our office rats at work had a shaved spot from surgery and it never seemed to bother her.
In the meantime just keep him warm and dry and try to keep uncontrolable sniggering to a minimum, in front of him anyway. Those guys are smart. He may seek revenge…
I have a smallish bunny sweater I could send to help keep him warm.
I promise that Benny wouldn’t miss it…
Oh, it could have been worse. You could have had to have your pussy shaved.
What?
I know this is an odd question, but is your shaved rat all wrinkly? When I worked with “nude rats” at a pharmaceutical company, they were all wrinkly, like old men, and I didn’t know if that was a result of the specific breeding, or if all rats were like that underneath the hair.
I agree, there must be a tiny sweater and lots of pictures.
Hell, you’ve got next Christmas’ greeting card right there!
If I might offer a suggestion:
When we had to stick a sweater on our cat, we discovered that tights worked really well.
So, I’m thinking that a baby sock with holes cut into it might make a perfect rat leotard!
While that is a very sound and sensible idea, I still have to say:
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! 
: wipes tear from eye :
Get one of those footy socks with the pom-pom on the back!
Does he look anything like this: http://www.hrw.com/science/si-science/biology/animals/molerats/molerat.html
Indeed. Have you read The Secrets of NIMH? I think you should be worried.
He doesn’t look bald and wrinkly, actually. He looks like a poodle- his hair on his body is still there for the most part, but it’s a hell of a lot shorter. Sort of looks like when someone shaves their head on the next to lowest setting- there’s still just a little bit of hair there. It’s adorable. And feels really soft.
But the hair on his head is normal length.
Excuse me, I’m going to go laugh hysterically again.
So are we going to get any pics?
Puh-lease! I want something new for my desktop background.
Well, neither me or my girl has a digital camera. She got one for her birthday, she just needs to pick it out. I think we’re going shopping for it this afternoon.
My rats recently got lice. My vet gave them a bit of Revolution for puppies/kittens on the back of the head, everything was gone within three days and it’s killed off the subsequent hatchings. I didn’t look up your previous thread, but what treatment did you use? My vet is a specialist in exotics so I trust it was safe and they haven’t suffered any ill effects from the medicine that I can tell (I had to medicate all five though only three had lice/they live in separate cages). I know people that use it fairly regularly if they have recurring problems.
Also, my vet told me I could give them 0.1cc of children’s Benedryl (the regular allegry kind/I bought the dye-free stuff) for the itching. Just make sure the only ingredient is the antihistamine and that’s the stuff. I have a syringe I dose it with that the vet gave me. You can give it to them once every 4-6 hours and it really does help with them scratching until they give themselves scabbies. I squirt it on a tiny corner of bread and they gobble it up.
As always, I am not a vet, YMMV and all that.