RATTIES!!!!

Rats always have jazz hands.

RC(0.9) 3m7r !B!CD+F+(F)S--ocTHreUsFa+e++++BFAn!p

Carrie Rat	Holly Rat	Garlic Rat	Captain Todd
Grendel	Krycek	Butters	Bacon
Mr. Tibbs	Unnamed Rattie

These are our little ratties! Click on their images for more photos. Or check out group shots here.

The rats live in a large Martin's cage on top of a dresser. The rats have access to the whole cage plus the two top drawers of the dresser. We lock the cage at night and when we leave the house. When we're home, it's all open; we also let them run in the kitchen when we're in there (we can close it off). This arrangement seems to work pretty well. We'd like to be able to leave it open all the time, but Garlic has figured out how to jump down from the dresser-- about four feet off the ground! She's a daredevil.

We use CareFresh as bedding. It works fine, but we still have to clean it about once a week.

We have a clear plastic ball the we got the rats so that they could run around outside the cage and still be safe. Holly is terrified of it and Todd doesn't like it much either, so really it's Garlic's. It is hilarious to see her tooling around in that thing. We also have a Wodent Wheel, donated by Auntie Melissa. They all seem to like that and run in it quite a bit.

Other rat accouterments include a hammock, which they sleep in, and a straw ball thing that they especially love to sleep in. We also supply them with assorted boxes and paper. Dave has invented a "rat kong" which is awesome... he takes a thin box (like a granola bar box) and lines the inside THINLY with peanut butter. Then he stuffs in a bunch of paper towels and staples the open end (using just one staple). The rats LOVE it and work to gnaw the thing open and eat the peanut butter. I was worried at first they might hurt themselves on the staple, but we've had no problems with the setup so far.