Feeling hot, hot, hot

Atypically for Britain, we have hot weather at the moment. This week the temperature has been routinely in the mid 20s (Centigrade) during the day and mid teens at night. I’m not much of a hot weather person myself but it must be even worse for the rats – at least I don’t wear an un-removable fur coat!

So our usual methods for keeping them cooler have swung into action. They have a fan in their room, on a timer so it comes on at intervals during the day. When we are at home the window is open – I only close it when we are both out (I’m a little paranoid like that). And they have granite blocks which go in the freezer overnight then in the cages during the day. On Thursday, when I did the weekly shop, I bought them some frozen berries. They were bemused at first but now seem to be enjoying them.

It’s taken it out of them a bit, I think, especially the boys. I went upstairs the other evening to find Radar flaked out on a ledge looking very flat, but mostly they seem to be coping.

Playground alterations

Not long now before our annual holiday, which means getting everything set up for our friend L to take care of the youngsters while we’re away. The group she looked after last year have all departed, and though she has met all the current residents she has not had to look after them. Playtimes can be especially difficult, given the talents our lot have for getting into trouble.

We normally have playtime in our room, using the double bed, or occasionally in the living room, using the sofa and coffee table. Both options involve transporting the rats from the rat room to the play area – something which we take for granted but which someone less experienced in rat wrangling can find a challenge. It can be tricky enough even for one of us (J is working away a lot at the moment, leaving me in sole charge during the week) but if you don’t do it every day, it’s daunting.

Last year we were experimenting with using the rat room floor – blocking off places we didn’t want them getting into, and having rugs and cushions on the floor for them to run round. This didn’t last long and I suspect the same will happen with our current efforts, for the same reason. The boys take to the change in routine fairly badly and show little inclination to do much exploring, which makes it much easier to deal with them – with our cages as they are now, the lower storey of the boys’ cage can be left open with boxes for them to climb up and they can come and go as they please. In practice this means that Hawkeye gets in and out of the cage, runs around a bit and thoroughly enjoys himself, and Radar freaks out after four minutes, gets back into the cage and stays there.

The girls take to new surroundings much more readily, and this is where the problem lies. Pinch views the entire world as hers for the exploring, so off she goes, trying to get into corners, behind furniture, and so on, necessitating much more awareness of where she is and what she’s doing than with the boys. If you then get up to go and retrieve her from somewhere, Bitesize will follow you and end up under your feet. The result of all this is that J ends up a nervous wreck, convinced that sooner or later one of the girls is going to come to a sticky end. There’s no reason why they should, as long as we’re careful, but the mental images are horrible of course.

The extra dimension for our first attempt at rat room playground was that once the boys had been out, gone back in and had their dinner and we got the girls out, the boys had a massive, stand-up, screaming fight – probably because they could hear the girls running around chattering, and it set their hormones off. Hopefully that sort of thing will settle down. The boys are now a bit on the old side for neutering (they turned 12 months old last week) and I don’t want them starting to fight again. The last month or so thay had calmed down considerably.

So, we shall see how long this playground lasts. When I’m here on my own I suspect it will be quicker and simpler for me, and I know L prefers to manage playtime this way too.

Well, that was a performance

Today was “Dealing with the New Cage” day. We had been looking for a replacement for the Super H for some time but hadn’t seen anything that really fit the bill or that we could afford. Then, my manager told me that his manager, R, had a cage he wanted to get rid of – his son’s chinchilla had died, the cage was less than 12 months old – so I asked R what it was like. It sounded good and he didn’t want much for it so I said yes, and took delivery of it last week. This weekend being a four-day break for Easter, we decided that we could get the cage set up and the room rearranged today.

I found out last night that the cage is actually a double Critter Nation, a cage which seems to be quite good quality and reasonably highly thought of. Looking at the pieces, I had scratched my head a little about how it would all fit together but R had labelled the main pieces with letters and drawn a diagram so I figured we would work it out. After a few false starts we got the cage itself together and on its stand – it’s a big beast, taller than me and with two levels and two sets of double doors on the front.

It also has two half-width shelves. Now, looking at the online instructions for the Critter Nation, these are meant to just clip into the sides of the cage. Ours look very different – they have hooks along one side which kind of hook over the cage bars, but then they have this sort of swinging arm arrangement which looks as though its hooked ends are meant to hang from the bars of the level above (or the roof of the cage) – only, they don’t fit. And the shelf is the wrong width for the cage. Then there are three ladders which are the wrong length and width for everything else. I asked all the rat people I know on Facebook if anyone knew how they were meant to fit, but no luck yet. So if anyone on here can help, I’d appreciate it.

We ended up not using the shelves and ladders, but just giving the boys several wooden ledges for getting up and down between the levels, and (hopefully) enough hammocks and things to keep them happy, at least until we find out how the shelves are meant to be used.

So this is their new home:

The boys' new cage. Apparently it's big enough for eleven rats.

For comparison purposes, this is the girls’ cage:

Much more compact and bijou.

The boys did manage to pose nicely while exploring.

Hawkeye even worked out how to get down to the lower level (I put their red castle down there to make it a little easier to get down from the hammock):

I think the poor things are properly confused. They’ll get used to it – and just when they do, we’ll move them into the smaller cage and start building up a great big group of girls for this cage. Maybe. In the meantime, any chance I get to buy new shelves, ladders or anything else to make the cage better to get around, I’ll take.

World Rat Day

Today, April 4th 2012, is the tenth World Rat Day. It was started with the aim of promoting the positives about rats. Every year I think I should try to do something, even if it’s just having some ratty friends over for tea and cake, but it always slips my mind until a few days before.

This year I thought our rats should at least get a bit of a treat on what is, after all, their special day. Now, I’m fairly strict with our kids – they get very little dairy or sugar as a rule – but one of the small hollow chocolate eggs I bought for our Easter egg hunt at work had been smashed and fallen on the floor, so I nabbed it to be the ratties’ Easter Egg, and decided they could have a little taste today in honour of Their Day.

They were mostly not to sure what to do with it as none of them had had chocolate before. and in fact Hawkeye dropped his after his first taste and had to be persuaded to have another go. But in the end they all enjoyed it.

Hawkeye: "Mum, are you trying to poison me?"

Radar: "Shut up and eat it, you fool."

I did have the usual trouble trying to photograph the boys, hence the odd camera angle in the photo of Radar. Of course I got the obligatory one of them hanging over the edge of the bed:

"Mum! Mum!"

But I also managed to get a couple of good ones:

Radar attempting to look mean and moody

Hawkeye, momentarily confused as to where I am

The girls were equally unsure about chocolate to start with but also tucked in when they got the idea.

Pinch: "Om nom nom nom."

Bitesize: "Mmm, maybe if we're really good we can have this more often."

A few other pics of the girls too – together:

Well, sort of together, anyway

And separately:

Bitesize posing

Pinch going for extreme close up (and ending up a little out of focus, but I think it's a cute pic)

Happy World Rat Day!

 

Just out of interest

This blogging can be a complicated business and I’m hopelessly un-techy. Here on WordPress I have two blogs, this one and The Random Gardener, but because I set this one up first this is my default identity. So, I go and post comments on gardening blogs and if people follow the link back they find rats, which must be confusing.

So in case you have done just that, and wondered what on earth I was doing, my other blog is at http://gardeningamateur.wordpress.com .

Thanks for stopping by

Some sad and some happy

We had a bit of a photo session this evening, which went about as well as expected – the boys rush towards me so I end up with a lot of pictures of them leaning out from the edge of the bed, and the girls mostly ignored the whole business.

Before we get to the happy and the cute pics of the baby girls, though, there is a little sad this week too. Our old girl Clarice has left us and gone to be reunited with her sister Cora and their friends Domino and Arkwright. She became rather weak and wobbly last week which I thought was old age and a bit of hind leg degeneration, but she took a turn for the worse at the weekend and from the symptoms it was clear she had a pituitary tumour. We didn’t think she would last the weekend, but she held on, and we had already decided that if she hung on till Monday we would call the vet and arrange for her to be helped on her way. And that was how it worked out, in the end. Our vet is very good, and gave Clarice a little anaesthetic gas before the injection so she was already asleep. All very peaceful.

Clarice in happier, healthier times. And with a treat.

So, life with our four bouncy youngsters continues. The boys were unco-operative about photos but we got a few good ones:

Hawkeye - the flash was a bit bright so he looks rather more silvered than he actually is.

Radar, distracted with a yoghurt drop just long enough for J to take a photo of him sitting still.

The boys together in typical "Mum, what are you doing?" pose.

The girls were rather better behaved, and look to be turning into right little posers.

Pinch:

Look at me, I'm cuter than Bitesize!

And Bitesize:

Sorry Pinch - you're not cuter than me.

Catalogue pose

And hit them with your most adorable smile.

 

A moment of panic

Radar keeps giving us these heart-stopping moments at cage cleaning time. Last time it was nearly a broken foot. This time – well, for a while we thought it was going to be much worse.

Hawkeye was already out of the cage and having a fuss, while Radar was in a hammock with his back to us. This is normal, and usually I shake the hammock a bit or even take it down altogether to persuade him out. This time – no response. I shook the hammock. Nothing. I poked his rear end. Nothing. I started to panic, and went to pick him up – for a horrible second he felt lifeless. He couldn’t be – he’s less than  a year old. He’s healthy.

As I started to close my hand over him, he twitched and looked round. A disgusted look, that clearly said “I was having a lovely dream – about girls, or food, or something. Anyway, it was lovely. And you woke me up. You will pay for this, pathetic human.”

Radar, I’m so sorry I interrupted your dream. I’m just glad you’re ok.