The cage

Curly and Patches are spoiled with a double decker Critter Nation Cage.







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And although the pictures may seem spacious. Critter nations seem to always look smaller than actual in pictures. Critter Nations are behemoths, but Curly and Patches love theirs.

http://www.midwesthomes4pets.com/category/default.aspx?submenu=2&catid=140
Midwest homes is the company that makes Critter Nations. There are several features of this cage that makes them perfect for rats:
* half inch bar spacing with powder coated bars. ( girl rats can't squeeze thru and rat urine is easily washed off the powder coating and doesn't permanently stinkify the bars.
* the whole front of the cage is the doors so you can open the cage and easily reach every nook and cranny. This means easy cleaning and easy access to the rats.
* spacious

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Training 101

The rats are swell.

I shall need to get some photos of their training sessions. Patches loves food so much which means it looks like she'll do anything for a snack. Curly is not that far behind in love of food.

I want to get one of those clicker trainer pointers to help with training.

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Veterinarian Care

One of the first things I did when we got the rats was to find them a vet. I've been planning to have them be seen by the Wilton Vet because I knew they did exotics. But, years ago I had seen them for my dog and had been more impressed with their ability to spend my money than their actual vet care. They were obviously marketing themselves for the wealthy people that live around here.

Well, I had dismissed the vet that was less than a mile from our house because I just presumed that they must only serve cats and dogs. This weekend at the Georgetown fair, I stopped by the georgetown vet booth.

I wish I had a picture. The vet had her macaw there. His name was Pogo. (He had only one leg, grins the perfect pirate parrot) And, they were handing out dog/cat/bird treats. I'd picked up a bird treat and asked if I could take it. The vet asked me if I had a bird, and I said, well.... I have rats. And, the vet grinned from ear to ear, and started stuffing bird treats into a bag for my rats, and of course, she encouraged us to have her rats see her for the annual checkups and bring some poop, too... ewwww

So, I checked out their website... www.georgetownvet.com and It looks really good. The vet apparently really is an expert in exotics. Now, I feel lame for just dismissing the nearby vet.

So,hopefully, soon I will be reporting on how their first vet visit goes.


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The new keyboard and YOGIS

Although BlogPress thinks I post from my iPhone, I actually post from my iPad. And, today, I broke down and bought a keyboard to make typing easier, though, I must admit the iPad is pretty easy to type short stuff with.

One of the odd things of using a keyboard with the iPad is that you don't have a mouse but rather just poke the screen. Yip, poke the screen. It takes a bit to get used to. Indeed, I was trying to figure out how to get the cursor to the beginning of a line, and asked Skip to help while poking at the screen saying, how do i get my cursor here? Um, well, yeah, that IS how you get the cursor there.

The lousy picture today is Skip attempting to have a calm yogi treat dispensing. The rats, on the other hand, really really want their yogis. (yogurt dipped treats for rats)

By the way, our rats are still getting used to being on our shoulders, and they may run and hide if you try to just pick them up out of their cage. But, if you have a yogi, they jump six inches out of the cage just to get closer to the yogis, and they were scampering all over Skip.
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Caja Energizing smoothee

Mmm I'm still amazed at what the ritties enjoy eating. Here, Patches is slurping a smoothee from Robek's. They finished it all in about an hour. I guess they occasionally took brain freeze breaks.

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The Rats

My home is now infested with rats. Ok. They are friendly, and we, um, actually bought them.

It all started with Skip wanting to get a hamster, and I was like, "No way, that will just be more mess and I don't want a hamster anyways." I had stood strong until one day at Petsmart. A naked rat running like the wind on her wheel caught my eye. And, mostly jokingly, I said we could get a rat. I guess I have good memories of the book, The Rats of Nimh, and when I was a kid, my brother had commented that rats were great pets. My brother had had a pet mouse, and he apparently thought highly of rats.

Anyways, in a whirlwind, our shopping cart was filled up with all of the fixings we thought our new pets would need. With just blind luck, we ended up with good supplies and two healthy female rats, and they weren't even pregnant. Thank you Petsmart

Rats are sooooo social that they need companionship or they will be ill. We ended up with two because Skip wanted his own rat. He might have read something in the rat book that both of us had been skimming desperately to minimize our cluelessness. I, on the other hand, was just thrilled that we averted catastrophe by getting two rats.

The Rats
Curly is the beautiful hairless one, and she's smart and bosses her buddy around. Patches is the furry one. And they are just so personable that they just had to have their own blog.