Photo of the Day, 2/4/2020
Today’s Photo of The Day, selected randomly from the Photos page. There’ll be another tomorrow!
Derek in the tube. (Click thumbnail to enlarge image.)
Rat Care explains how our rats are looked after and Rat Habits describes more about their behaviour. There are also plenty of Photos and Videos to view. The site is named after our first rats, Ronnie and Derek, who appear in the banner at the top.
Latest Updates
Message from Derek
Message from Derek
Message from Derek:
I’ve been naughty and, while I was allowed to run around on top of the cage this evening, I nibbled the water bottle and now it’s leaking. Our water’s now being put in our backup water holder which is a tealight container.
I’m so naughty because our humans will have to buy a new water bottle tomorrow!
Derek
Scratch ‘n’ Sniff
Scratch ‘n’ Sniff 
See photos below of Derek enjoying a good scratch while he and Ronnie relaxed on a chair.
Click thumbnails to enlarge. More photos on the Photos page.
Photo of the Day, 3/4/2020
Photo of the Day, 3/4/2020
Today’s Photo of The Day, selected randomly from the Photos page. There’ll be another tomorrow!
Ronnie sniffing blossom, Apr 2019. (Click thumbnail to enlarge image.)
Sourcorn
Sourcorn
Ronnie and Derek love eating sweetcorn and I gave them some to eat from a cob. They enjoyed it a lot, as shown in the video below, but shortly afterwards the ‘sweet turned to sour’ as they started wrestling over the cob!
I now cut the corn off and place it in their mini-buckets for them to avoid any wrangling.
Listen out for the loud noise they make when eating the sweetcorn!
Rude Tube
Rude Tube
Ronnie and Derek have separate ‘cosy tubes’ but they usually end up getting in the same one, resulting in trouble as I’ve previously posted about. See below a storyboard of new photos showing what happened when Ronnie rudely barged his way into the tube that Derek was happily resting in!
Click thumbnails to enlarge. More photos on the Photos page.
Photo of the Day, 4/4/2020
Photo of the Day, 4/4/2020
Today’s Photo of The Day, selected randomly from the Photos page. There’ll be another tomorrow!
Cosy in the house, Apr 2019. (Click thumbnail to enlarge image.)
The Buckets
The Buckets
Watch Ronnie and Derek rifling through their food ‘bouquets’, picking out the best bits of some rat muesli and making a mess in the process – not exactly ‘keeping up appearances’!
A ‘tail’ of woe
A ‘tail’ of woe
On Wednesday evening, Ronnie started squeaking loudly when he moved in any way that caused his tail to move upwards. It seemed the source of the pain was at the base of the tail where it joins his back. By Friday morning, he was obviously still in pain whenever his tail moved upwards, so I took him to the vet that afternoon.
As there were no other symptoms (he was eating, drinking, defecating and urinating normally and had no loss of energy), the vet was satisfied there were no major problems and that the tail may have been slightly injured, possibly during a play-fight with Derek, and it’d cure itself. Something similar happened to Ronnie’s tail in July (but obviously to a much lesser extent in terms of pain) and that cured itself within about 10 days.
The vet prescribed Metacam to Ronnie, an anti-inflammatory and painkiller which is primarily used for dogs. He takes a daily dose and the problem should be cured within a week. If not, he’ll need to have an x-ray, but things are looking positive as the pain’s mostly subsided since taking Metacam.
I initially gave the medicine in the morning so it’d be in his body while he was sleeping and would assist the healing, but this meant it wore off by the time he was active at night, so I started giving it to him in the evening instead to cover his active hours and ensure they’re as painless as possible while his tail’s healing.
Elephant in the Room
Elephant in the Room
Derek’s previously ejected a wooden tomato toy from their house (see post here) and has now taken to ejecting their soft toy elephant!
Watch the video below.