rats

[ratcreature]

Um, I know that this is primarily intended as a fandom journal, and I promise I won't constantly post cute animal entries or anything, but a while ago I've decided to get rats again. And unlike last time I had rats, I decided to not just buy them somewhere, but contact the local rat breeding club, and get my rats from a hobby breeder, so that I know that they will be well cared for, healthy, and used to human contact from the beginning. Anyway, a few weeks ago I talked with a local breeder and looked at her rats, and she told me that I could probably get two from the next litter, she planned.

And today I got a call from her that the babies had been born Sunday, and that while the litter was quite small with only seven that were born alive, I would indeed get two of the babies (I wanted males, and there are five males and two females in the litter), that is of course once they are old enough in roughly four and a half weeks. I can even visit them before that, when they're a little older, i.e. in about two weeks or so.

However, for now she sent pictures of the babies! And I got a first look at them. Admittedly, they're not exactly beauties yet like their parents -- the mother is a silver blue berkshire, the father a russian blue, and both were very friendly too when I visited them -- for now they're all naked and with closed eyes, but still --





I'm really looking forward to have rats living with me again.

Comments

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

eee ratlets! how cute. :)

right now I have one hairless and one brown-and-white girl upstairs. they like air conditioning and yogurt. can't say i blame 'em....

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

They are sort of cute in that piled on top of each other not yet ready to be born way.

[bethbethbeth.livejournal.com]

They're actually bizarrely cute like that!

[ratcreature]

Yeah, I also find them surprisingly cute for their somewhat grub-like state. :D

I'm afraid mine won't get to enjoy air conditioning, but then there aren't that many hot days here anyway (like the last couple of days the highs were between 60°-70°F). I'm prepared to offer them yogurt though.

For now though I'll be first busy to rearrange my apartment so that the cage will fit there in a nice place for them. While the cage I found for a reasonable price is not that large, with a floor space of 80x50cm (I think that's 32x20 inches or so?) and 80cm height, I still have to make room for it. And also reduce the clutter in that room, so that the two of them will be able to play outside of the cage without destroying my stuff or hurting themselves...

[ratcreature]

True, they're really small at first. One of my earlier not so great experiences with pet-shop bought rats was that the two female rats I had gotten back then had been already pregnant, so two weeks after I bought them I suddenly had two not yet quite tame mother rats and IIRC fourteen babies. The babies were really cute, once I got to see them, that is. Which however wasn't quite so young as the rats in this picture, because their mothers didn't trust me yet. They felt easily threatened, so that I had to actually wear leather work gloves near them at first if I did anything they interpreted as coming too close to their babies, or risk painful bites (I found out just how much a rat bite can hurt if the rat is serious about harming you -- definitely not pleasant), and so I pretty much left their nest in peace the first two weeks and cleaned the cage around them very carefully... It was a lot of fun, yet very stressful to deal with a whole pack of them. Also my mom (I was still living at home back then) was definitely not thrilled with sudden rat population increase.

[ratcreature]

Heh. They certainly have the "cute baby animal" proportions, even though don't have the cute, fluffy fur yet. And I admit that I find the way they always lie on top of each other to conserve body heat adorable.

[sparklebutch.livejournal.com]

Mitzim! *makes high pitched noises of CUTE*

[ratcreature]

An understandable reaction. Nothing screams "Behold the power of our cuteness!" quite like a pile of little baby animals... *grin*

[dawnglider.livejournal.com]

They are oddly cute, blind and snuffling and piled in a heap.
How long have you kept rats?

[ratcreature]

Actually not that long, for I think about five years or so while I still lived at home as a teenager. Then I didn't once I moved out. I haven't kept rats in the last decade, mainly because I worried about some of the practical consequences, especially the "worst case" scenarios I tend to imagine. Like, for a while I couldn't have guaranteed that there would be someone caring for them in case of emergencies, for example should I need to stay in a hospital without much notice and the like, and there's also the possibility of more serious veterinary costs, like needed tumor operations, which I have to be able to cover under all circumstances, even if I should have other unexpected expenses the same month, things like that. I mean, I know that for rats I won't have extreme veterinary costs, not like what my sister recently paid to treat her cat's heart disease with high-tech medicine (I think it was almost €2000 in total). But still, I mean, my last two rats had respiratory problems that needed medication several times in their lives, and both had tumors when they were older, and some months that cost me quite a bit, well actually back then it cost my parents. So I wasn't quite ready to commit to rats for long time, even though I missed having cuddly. playful and often entertaining pets around.

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

oh, i envy your temps.

the highs here have been around 98. my car thermometer hit 101 on Wednesday.

today it's raining and only supposed to get up to about 84. i am ecstatic.