Get your rat[s] out!

[RattieofCatan]

I like picture threads, I like rats. I know that there are other rat owners on here even so come share your ratties pictures, please!

Here are my seven. Ashi is the blue dumbo, he's a lone boy as he's epileptic and has other issues. The four girls are Aeryn (agouti), Zhaan (black rex), Oreo (almost black or dark agouti hooded, can't really tell with her) and Nibbles (silverfawn hooded).
The two big boys are Howl (chinchilla) and Haku (burmese).

[tadpole39]

I love rats, my first rat was a present to me from a homeless man at the clinic where I worked. She was pregnant and had 13 babies! Quite a shock! Was bitten by rat bug and had several generations after that.

Would love more but am currently obsessing over guinea pigs and we have cats. I always enjoyed the nfrs meets and editions of pro rata.
Happy days.

[imisstaxdiscs]

Are you tiny, OP, or are your rats huge?

So adorable I miss keeping rats.

[RattieofCatan]

I've never been to an NFRS meet, I have got to get to one! My local breeder has meets every so often which are great though, I got to meet a load of Aeryn, Zhaan and Ashi's siblings at the last one and people I've spoken to on the breeder's FB page but not outside of it.

My rats are quite big The big boys are 647g and 714g, my big girl (Zhaan) is 505g and her sister is 461g. Their Daddy is over 800g though so that was to be expected!

[RattieofCatan]

A better picture of Howl and Haku, not sure why Haku is squinting though! & Howl has only got one eye, he's not winking

And a better one of Nibbles, given that she was squished under the others! She's our old lady and smallest, she's under 290g at the moment and she is at least 2yrs and 5mo, we're not 100% sure as we took her in March 2014 from a family who had owned her for a year IIRC.

[NathalieM]

Beautiful rats my love! I also absolutely love the Miyazaki references in their names ;)

[RattieofCatan]

Thanks! We're miyazaki fans in this house, well, the three boys more than the girls The two big boys were supposed to be Sophie and Chihiro but the breeder got our reservation wrong and gave us boys instead of the two girls we'd reserved!

The two girls we got as babies are named after Farscape characters :)

[SnipSnapCrashCrack]

My 2 boys, 5months oldish Garfield (topaz) and Odie (agouti)

[RattieofCatan]

Oh Garfield is a beautiful colour! I love the orangey colours :)

I have a soft spot for agoutis, they get such a bad rep because they're most like wildies but my agouti is such a sweetheart!

[CrapBag]

Aw lovely rats.

We have recently got our first pair of rats. Female Fancy rats. They were 11 weeks old, think we've had them about 4 weeks now. They are very friendly and seem to love coming up onto my shoulder. Molly spent ages sat on my neck yesterday in my hair. Anna then climbed up and started grooming my hair.

It's nice to meet fellow rat lovers. Nearly everyone I tell just goes "urgh". I do point out that I didn't go into the nearest sewer and pick up a couple of disease ridden wild rats but it doesn't make any difference.

They are lovely pets and I'm surprised at how much I am enjoying them. They are suppose to be for the kids.

[RattieofCatan]

Aw, tinies! I love tinies! I am supposed to be getting a tiny in September but my breeder seems to have decided not to breed the girl I wanted one from again so I'm not really sure whether to get another now or not (she was breeding silverfawns, I love silverfawns!)

Which rat is which crapbag?

[RattieofCatan]

& they are lovely pets :) I love how they have their own personalities and are all very sweet. Apart from Haku, Haku is a git

My two rescues, Nibbles and Oreo. My gorgeous agouti, Aeryn and Ashi again because he's my heart rat and special boy :)

[CrapBag]

Anna is the one on the right in the picture of them both and Molly is the one with the darker fur.

They have destroyed the hammock I bought them. Luckily Amazon have refunded me as it was done within a couple of hours of having it and not fit for purpose. I have cable tied it up and they have chewed the bits around the cable ties so hammock is now no good. I keep reading how much rats love hammocks but I'm reluctant to buy another. This one wasn't great despite the good reviews on amazon. I have seen a better one of pets at home but I don't want them to chew that to pieces too. Bloody pests! Cute though .

I love your blue dumbo rattie. He's lovely! They all are but he is particularly cute.

[RattieofCatan]

Rats really like hammocks. We have tonnes of hammocks, our girls can go through them in minutes if they're feeling up to it We usually have 3-6 in a cage at once, apart from Ashi's cage, he has one as he's not a fan of them, he prefers the bottom of his cage.

You don't have to buy specific "rat hammocks", we use old t-shirts, trouser legs, pieces of fabric, fleeces, placemats, etc. If they're chewers, they'll chew them no matter what.

Our big boys aren't chewers, they tend to get the same hammocks on rotation every week, the girls are though and we give them the same ones on rotation until they are utterly destroyed Our girls currently have a cube that used to have one opening, it now has three and the bottom is half gone too, they have a plammock which they've opened to access the inside of and a corner hammock that is missing its corner. Ashi doesn't chew fabric but shreds his boxes!

Baby rings are good for hanging hammocks up, these are the best we've found, nice and thin. If you buy hammocks buy ones with eyelets in the main part as opposed to the cords, or just cut holes in fabric. This is what we buy in bulk, it gets used on the bottom of our two big cages and also for hammocks. Any cheap fleece is great though. If you're feeling crafty you can even sew it into a two-sided hammock or cubes and all sorts!

& thanks, my blue dumbo is my special but sweet Ashitaka :)

[CrapBag]

Thanks for those links. I'm shit at sewing but I can make a hole for those rings to go through. I cut the edges off the hammock and left the rest in the cage as it's fleecy and they have immediately dragged it into the stick house thing and made a bed in there with it so are not sleeping in the plastic hut that they were sleeping in before. They obviously like the material. I thought they may as if any of our clothes slightly hang in the cage as we talk to them, they start trying to drag it in.

They also seem to like making nest out of a kitchen roll tube rather than the bedding I put in. First lot of bedding get I gave up with. I thought they'd like it as it was slightly fluffy but they didn't. Then I got carefresh stuff but they don't seem overly bothered, now I also have some of this white stuff which seems more like material but they do the seem keen on that either. They did like straw or whatever it was that was originally their bed. They pulled it apart until it wasn't a bed anymore and made a nest with the straw. Problem was it stank so I threw it. Similar to this www.ebay.ie/itm/Grassy-Hut-Grass-House-Hutch-Nesting-Den-for-Guinea-pigs-Degus-other-Rodents-/171791840446?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item27ff9774be

[RattieofCatan]

Our girls drag our clothes in too Ashi's cage is on top of theirs so they get easy access to grabbable clothes quite often! Put an old t-shirt or bit of fabric on the top of the cage and just leave it, they'll drag it through and use it to sleep in as an extra hammock. They love dragging things through, it's a game to them :)

I don't know why but they do generally seem to prefer shredding their own bedding as opposed to using the ready done stuff. Those straw things do get smelly quickly. You'll find all sorts in their nests, especially when they're nesting Only one of ours seems to nest, she doesn't do it often but when she does it's brilliant. She's been known to cut down whole honeycomb hammocks and drag them into a sputnik. She also had a time where she wasn't able to cut the honeycomb down, so she settled for dragging the bottom layer into the sputnik, as much as she could without actually detaching the entire thing. We had a girl who had a thing for labels. The commercial hammocks come with labels and she'd rip them out and stash them in her bedding along with labels from clothing we put in the cage.

Charity shops are also good places to find things for rats. Wine racks make great cage toys, clothes to be shredded or made into hammocks, bowls for their food (cheaper than commercial pet food bowls).
Toys don't have to be specifically for rats too, we use loads of parrot toys, perches are great (especially lava ledges). Ratrations is a site thats got lots of good things on it.

[RattieofCatan]

Ashi after his food shower
He will run under the scoop as we're filling his bowl. Every. Single. Time.

[CrapBag]

that picture did make me laugh. He looks so cute.

Rats are certainly resourceful. Mine seem to like labels too. Molly was in her usual place of the back of my neck yesterday and I could feel her trying to chew my label. I found the label to the destroyed hammock in their bed as well. Good tip for putting some material on top. Will keep them busy for a while.

Is that all you use for nests? I'm still putting bedding in because I've got a big bag of it but they did seem to like their straw bed they made. Trouble is you aren't supposed to put straw in a rat cage are you? Or could I use hay for them instead?

I rescued the cut up hammock they had dragged inside their plastic house, it was well chewed and pretty manky. Will see how it washes. At the moment they only have the carefresh bedding.

[RattieofCatan]

He is very cute, very stupid too!

Haha, got to love a label teasing shoulder ratty! Do either of yours try to sit in your bra? One of my big boys still tries to squeeze in and at times I've had my boobs pushed out of bras from underneath so that a rat can snuggle under my boob

We don't actually use any nesting material. They used to shove out anything they hadn't "made" themselves so we stopped buying it. In our big boys and girls cages they have no substrate or nesting material what-so-ever. Ashi has a substrate in his cage but he actually shoves it out of the way to lay on the plastic bottom. The only time any of ours has actually made a nest that even half fills their preferred spot for the week is when Nibbles has been broody and nesting, the rest seem to prefer less nesting material in their boudoirs, possibly because they spend so much time curled up together and get too hot.

[CrapBag]

Um, no, no bra sitting here! Thankfully . They seem to crawl a lot around my neck, shoulders, top of my chest and armpits . Bit tickly that one! Oh and Anna will go down my sleeves if I have my dressing gown on. Problem is trying to get them out of my clothes! They really don't want to get out. If I have my hair down Molly will kind of tangle herself in it at the back of my neck and stay there for ages.

We are using cat litter. I seem to be going through loads of the stuff. I suspect I have been putting it in a bit too thickly after seeing a guide that said a quarter of an inch was fine. Still seems to be a lot though. I'll use up the bedding I've got seeing as I've bought it then I think I'll stop bothering. They seem to push it all out anyway and much prefer the straw or material stuff.

[70isaLimitNotaTarget]

Bumping for Blue (these threads are getting into ZombieThread territory but there's lots about bedding and toys, so worth a look

[BlueRaptor]

Thanks for all the bumps for me!

My new girls (Roxy and Lexi) are my first rat babies and have only been with me a couple days. I'll admit, I'm a little bit embarrassed I didn't look into the sourcing a bit better and our girls came from a large, well known pet shop you have definitely educated me to know if we ever got more I'd look into breeders! I know we've only had our girls two days but couldn't imagine taking them back or anything silly!

Still very nervous, Lexi literally poos on me every time I get her out and is very quick and difficult to hold. Roxy is much more nervous in the cage, but actually okay once I have her out and pop her on me or in my jumper! No picture of Lexi yet as just too quick, so here's Roxy for now!

[RattieOfCatan]

Don't feel bad about buying pet shop rats, it's not until you actually start talking to other owners that you tend to find out that there are breeders! Your girls will warm up to you and still be lovely, I'm sure :)

Just keep handling them, give them cuddles and bribe them

Here are three of mine, two in the above photos and one who we got on Halloween!

[RattieOfCatan]

And here are three more. I think that covers all of my current lot!

My boys are Howl and Ashi. They're both loners, Ashi has always been one and Howl lost his brother in November so has been a lone boy since.

The girls are Aeryn, Zhaan, Oreo and Kozu (Himilayan)

[WonderingAspie]

They will stop pooing on you and probably quite quickly. Ours would crap all over the place when we used to get them out and go off for a wee. Now they never ever poo when we get them out and only 1 wees on us, I think she is marking us .

All gorgeous rats!

[Nicky93]

Love these rattie pics 😁😍 I have 5 rats, Eddie, Bubble, Saffy, Pluto and Pea. Pets at home rats as I didn’t know about breeders at the time. All were skittish at first but now very tame. They love fresh fruit and veg, and hammocks of course! I get mine from these sites: //www.spoiledrathammocks.co.uk or //www.etsy.com/shop/spoiledrats