note to self:

[ratcreature]

For my next rats (hopefully still a while off *knocks on wood*) I need to remember to get them used to sitting on my lap for eating non-portable treats early on. After this morning's dose I suspect a part of Kieran's resistance is that he doesn't particularly care for sitting still on my lap and eating there. He's used to either carry treats to safety to eat them away from other greedy rats, or getting wet treats in their cage, because I'm not that fond of rats spreading scrambled eggs or such over my carpet. So he's not only against the taste of laced pudding, he doesn't think my lap is a good place to eat anything.

Today I pushed him to eat part of the laced pudding on my lap after I put his salve on, and then when he became too fidgety I put the rest in the cage with him while I salved Rusty's feet. (Obviously I can't have the antibiotic pudding in the cage with both, because even though Kieran being stronger means he usually doesn't share well what he truly wants for eating, Rusty would manage to snatch and eat some, especially with Kieran not that keen on the antibiotic pudding.) Anyway, inside the familiar cage he licked up the rest with fewer stops, so I might try giving it to him in the cage, at least in part for future doses too. Unfortunately Kieran does try to scoop and hide wet, mushy treats, or drags the dish around, so just offering everything inside the cage carries its own hazards.

Comments

[droolfangrrl]

Maybe you need to get a small pet carrier to use as a quarentien (sp???) cage and to feed him things like that?

[ratcreature]

I have a both a pet carrier (that he wants to escape from instead of eating, i.e. the scenario in the last post) and small cage for quarantine purposes (I got that when a rat wasn't allowed to climb, and thus the separation of elements in my large cage which I usually do for quarantine wasn't enough). But it is inconvenient to set up just for a rat to eat in it, and he doesn't know it either, so if I'd put him into that right now, he would just want to explore it, then he'd notice the small size and would try to escape, and be more distracted than on my lap.