She’s a feeder rat (basically a white rat with red eyes like you’d find in a lab). Anyhow, she was rescued by me as nieghobr’s kid decided that he didn’t want to feed her to his snake.
What I am asking for is information you have to help rats along.
I have noticed she’s getting a little fat, I always keep good food around the house like fresh veggies and she actually eats better than me.
I don’t want her to get fat but I want to spoil her.
Any tips you have that can help her along would be great. She’s not bred for intelligence or temperament but she’s a sweetie regardless. I plan on getting her a housemate (sister) so she wont be so lonely. She loves to run in the front yard, run along my body and even run around the house…next up, a thing she can enjoy living outside her “house” without me there hovering like a mama hen.
I gather there are some Dopers out there that have perfected (or have tried to perfect) the care of rats.
New Yorkers and other big city folks that find rats repulsive need not apply.
I don’t think letting her roam around with out supervision is a good idea . Even the best of rats will gnaw off all the buttons on your remote controls, cell phones, ect. My rats have also destroyed my computer speakers, numerous important papers, and a pair of jeans. They can, given enough time, get into anything and they will destroy it. It is part of their nature.
But one of the coolest things about rats is they eat pretty much anything, especially things that people like. But avoid feeding them too much meat or nuts because they might start to bald. Also avoid feeding them more than a couple of laps of anything carbonated. They can’t burp and it will hurt their stomaches. If you want to make sure they get a good diet I suggest rat pellets called forte-diet. It has everything they need and gives them something to gnaw on too.
Rats love hammicks and tubes in their cage. The hamster tubes are worthless because they are usually to small for a rat to enjoy and too expensive to replace every couple weeks ( Rats chew through them fast). So I suggest pvc pipes, they are cheap and last a whole lot longer. You can make a hammock simply by hanging the end of a jean leg from the cage ceiling with safety pins. they love to sleep in them.
Lastly never ever wear show when you play with them. I almost crushed one of my rats by accident. The full fource of my 160 pound body landed right on her stomach. I felt so awful petting her as she appeared to slowly stop moving and die. Miraculously she got up a couple minutes later and began scooting herself around the floor. She eventually got better (Rats are tough as hell), but now I’m extremely careful where I step. I don’t want to ever feel like that again.
Be sure to always pick up and hold small animals like rats every day, because if you don’t they’ll hold all their urine in until it builds up to lethal levels in their bodies.
If you’re going to let your rat run around, you have to be there to watch her. Keep in mind that rats will be able to squeeze into surprisingly narrow spaces, so think about if there’s any little holes or crevices that she might be able to go into that might be dangerous for her or annoying for you. For example, there used to be a small space underneath my door that my rats learned to crawl under when my back was turned, and they’d go to my mom’s room and terrorize her.
The hammock is a good idea. I used to have one for my ratsies and they loved it. You can give her other things, like a small ball that she can roll around or a knotted rope to climb. But one of the best purchases you can make is a quality cage for your rat to live in. Make sure the floor isn’t made of wire with holes in it, as it’s very bad for the paws. If you have to get the wire-floor cage, you can line it with cardboard that you replace every few days. Ideally, if you end up having more than one rat, I reccomend a large, split-level cage.
I’d like to complain about your misleading thread title. I thought it was going to be about work or a bad child, so I came in to scold that with a title like that the topic should be rats. Now that I see it is rats, I still feel I was drawn in on a false title.
Here’s my advice:
Kill that dirty mother-fucker just as soon as you see it. Kill it dead. Dead, dead, dead. Then, throw it in the river like the rat that it is. Thank you.
