Update on the abuse case
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Last night Ryan (husband) went back to the petstore and got the last little boy out. He was in a cage with juvi rats, like a couple months older than him. He couldn’t find him at first and then from this pile of pale colored rats this little black dumbo head peeks up. -grins- Ryan said he damn near broke down into tears over it. He bit his tongue about the conditions, paid and left.
The reunion was so worth it. He ran up to mom and she proceeded to groom the hell out of him then he started playing with his siblings and later they all curled up for a nap.
Later, mom came out of her cage (when I’m at my desk I leave the door open so she can interact on her own terms) and nuzzled me like a cat does, did that walk by rub, and rubbed hard, not just a brush she was leaning into my arm as she dragged herself against it. Then, to make sure I knew it wasnt a fluke, did it again before proceeding to crawl up onto my folded arms and sit down.
Oh such a vicious little ball of fluff. I’d better wear armor before dealing with you. Because according to the lady who owned the store, you would, “Bite the hell out of (my) hands”.
For a rat who has never had any positive human contact, she sure is a forgiving soul and we love the hell out of her already. We both get a bit teary eyed just thinking about what she’s been through. I think helping her has meant more to us than possibly even to her. I mean I feel like she’s given ME a gift.
We dubbed her Aurora (which means dawn because we feel like she’s starting over and hopefully we can do right for her). Now we just need to name the silly little fluff balls (and monkey in the case of the double rex)
The abused girl…
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments
I’m still thinking of a name for these girls.
So I went to a petstore I got an ad for that I’d been meaning to check out. Since it was a small locally owned place I figured maybe it had supplies and such I couldn’t get at petsmart (like good lab blocks and such since I’m getting low..they didn’t but I found a supplier). Well while there, as is my nature, I asked to see the rats. Even getting back by the small animals I started to get sick to my stomach. The girl just flung her hand back towards a “display” of cages with small critters in it and said, “If we have them they’re over there” and walked away. There were none there so I asked if she had feeder rats (because she asked feeder or pet…I’m not even going to get into that gripe) so she leads be back to a sectioned off corner, the smell was terrible. There were a couple tanks of mice just overly packed in. I couldn’t even look. One girl was obviously ill (rat) they said they’d had her treated but nothing worked. I’m convenced that the bedding was pine pellets which would cause those kinds of skin and resperatory problems. Then there was a PEW in a dirty cage with a large number of pinkies, as I was trying to see how old the babies were she reached in and shoved mom to expose the babies, completely unnecessarily.
There were several other black painted, soiled cages. Then she leads me to a mom with 4 babies. Going on about how mean mom was but they could sell the babies. She opened the lid to this filthy cage and mom, a beautiful agouti veriberk sticks her nose up, the girl SWATS HER NOSE. Goes on about how she bites and how vicious she is. All I see is mom standing up to smell her hand, no teeth barred, no lunging, nothing, just sniffing. She grabs what had to be a 3 week old baby, couldn’t have been much older, out, by the tail. There were 4 babies. Two black veriberk dumbos, a double rex fawn, and what I think is a hemi (cream with a dirty back/butt). I couldn’t take them smacking mom around (she’d done it several more times despite me offering to get them out for her), so I offered to take mom and all the babies. She asked and the boss said no to mom, she’s too mean. I went up and talked to the owner myself and finally talked her into giving me mom despite her going on about how she’d tear my hands up biting them and how she’d never been handled. I assured her I’d take my chances.
Well she ended up keeping one of the dumbos, the male. I still wish I could get him, I think it was too early to take him from mom but they wouldn’t budge and I had to get mom out of there.
So on the ride home we still had another stop to make , thankfully it wasn’t too bad out and we had a blanket in the car so I wrapped that around a good chunk of the box and ran my errand, on the way home I feel a fuzzy brush on the back of my leg. Mom chewed her way out. Katya collected the babies and kept an eye on mom’s location until we got home. I got her back in the box and inside then she crawled out on my shirt. I pet her with one finger. Her fur reminds me of a rabbit, she’s a rex, very soft fur but her skin is messed up. I need to look into getting her some irv(whatever it’s called I can never spell or say it) but I suspect the pellets they were on were actually pine since it is the cheap stuff and they were giving them corn and such to eat so they didn’t strike me as the type to go out of their way for better bedding. The double rex has some spots on her too that have me worried. Mom sat on my arm while the kids got the cage ready and nibbled on a lab block, let me pet her. She came up and rubbed her nose to mine too. She sat on a fleece filled cage on my desk the rest of the night, gorged herself on scrambled eggs and lab blocks and layed on the top shelf, nose down the stairs watching her babies.
I wasn’t ready to put my hand in there for fear of spoking her into biting. Ryan did though and she didn’t even make an aggressive move towards him. When he put her back he left his hand in there and she just sniffed, no attempts to bite.
Oh Goodness…
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments
Ok so it’s been awhile since I’ve posted. Things have changed quite a bit. First of all, here is a set of pictures, the most recent are from the last week or so.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/levans/sets/72157607538849611/
Here is the current line up:
The boys:
Max
Gus Gus
Dylan
Mick
The girls:
Winifred (Wini)
Joslyn (Jos)
Talula
Cora & Rory (the twins)
Cecilia, Penelope, & Calyspo (the triad)
Nimue (nim-away) & Niamh (celtic blue girls)
Katya’s Girls:
Sophie (Sophia)
Isabelle (Izzy)
Victoria (Tori)
(possible) Foster Girls..though like anything else, the longer they’re in our house the harder it is to give them up:
Rose
Charlie
October
Frannie
Pet Store Abuse Rescues (these will probably all end up staying because of the circumstances are going to cause us to form a hard bond, or me at least), names still unknown, mom and 3 girls. Trying to talk my husband into going back for the other baby, a boy.
Next post will be the abuse story.
Joslyn, Winifred, and Talula
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments
Aka Jos and Wini
Jos and Wini were our second two rats and MY first two. Also the first two girls. Talula came a week later when I went to take the girls to the instore vet clinic (connected to the pet store I got the girls from). I couldn’t resist, she was standing in the corner of her cage, nose in the corner, just standing there. I even got a picture on my cell phone, sadly I can’t upload it. She stood there for several minutes and I had to take her and her adorable dumbo ears home. Talula is probably the least likely to snuggle up with us though she will, but is part ninja and will take every chance she can to steal Ryan’s (hubby) chips when he isn’t looking.
Wini was the same way, not the standing in the corner but the dumbo ears, she’s also the one who is most quick to run up and sit on your shoulder. They do a lot of their free range time on our bed and if you aren’t sitting on it and stand by it she will rush over and crawl up the front of your shirt or your arm. She also likes to stick her nose in your nose. Whiskers tickle btw.
Jos I loved her blue coloring, she’s the licker, she loves to just groom your face or fingers. She will also pick us over the other rats if given a choice of whom to spend time with. She’s a lover. In the attached picture Jos is a bit younger (a few weeks) and her fur is now slightly darker.
The Twins and Izzy
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments
Ok so I got snagged again this weekend. Isabelle aka Izzy, who is about 6-8 weeks old, a black and white hoodie. She was brought home as a cage mate for Sophie. After making introductions between Sophie and my other girls we realized while they could socialize together, they would never make good cagemates. Sophie hasn’t been around other rats except when she was with her littermates so she just didn’t have the right social skills, with a younger rat we figured they would blend together better. They are both Katya’s rats now (my daughter, pictured below…ok it’s her halloween costume but the face makeup and the hair color are the only costume additions, the cat is her cat, Claira)
Then I went to get lab blocks (I still need to figure out how to order harlan blocks) and found two, the twins, in the adoption area of petco. Someone had brought them in and I would guess they are about the same age as Joslyn, so about 4 months. They are ruby eyed beiges…and dumbos, a fact I didn’t notice until after I got them home (didn’t really matter then) and they are so cute.
Sophie
Monday, October 27th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments
I’m going to dedicate a post with pictures to each rattie. I’ll start with Sophie, the newest (mostly because I just took pictures of her).
We got her from a HS girl (and her mother) who had her for about 4-5 months, she’s about 6 months now, and they tried hard to take care of her but they just didn’t know much about rats (can’t say I was any better 12 years ago). She was in a decent sized cage but it was wire with no covering. She was eating guinea pig food (the little pellets) and her bedding on the bottom floor was the pellets. and the only covering she had was a small igloo. I covered the wire shelves, gave her some blocks and since she needed fattening up, some baby food and veggies and lots of bits of fleece. I haven’t replaced the litter on the bottom yet because I need to get some new stuff (since we don’t use litter in our other cages). She never goes downstairs anymore instead snuggles in her nest under the stairs. She was by herself and we’re hoping in a few weeks to introduce her to the other girls and eventually get her into their cage.
Right now she’s VERY skittish. Sweet as all get out but jumpy. She’ll greet us at the door and go downstairs to come out the bottom door and wander around us, she’s crawled onto my arm a couple times.
Her name was Roxy but we decided she was more a Sophie (I kept calling her that before we got her for some reason and we decided it fit). Tonight I made her a fleece cube and she’s moving back and forth from that and her little nest under the stairs. I filled the cube with fleece scraps from the project but she’s pushed it all out (you can see in the pictures below) Here are some photos from after I put the cube in. (and a couple from the day we got her, you can tell which those are by the wire cage floor before I covered them) She does have a wheelie tail which I didn’t realize came from running in her (too small) wheel. I don’t know if those relax eventually and start laying flat.
My kids are madly in love with her. She’s a double rex, I’ve never had a rex, double rex, or nekkie before, so this is all new to me.
Yay Ratties!
Sunday, October 26th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment
I adore nothing more than yammering on about my ratties. This often gets me a great deal of strange looks. I mean to most people their pocket pets with funny tails that to be honest, creepy a good many people out. Heck, 15 years ago they creeped me out.
I thought of them as no different than your average gerbil or mouse or hamster, designed to be in a cage and maybe held a couple minutes a day.
Then I had my eyes open by some very special rats, and now I’m addicted. To the point my husband and I are looking at starting a small scale rescue.
They are amazing, intelligent creatures and so very social and they like attention as much as a dog or cat.
It’s late so I’m not going to go on too much but I want introduce you to our current rattie family before I go.
Talula, Winifred, Joslyn, Max, Gus Gus, Dylan, Mick and Sophie.