Photos of the rats' condo housing would have been forthcoming, but I discovered that I never re-downloaded my digital camera software after the bad crash a few months back. Yes, I have my stinky little webcam. But, I can't take good photos with it from this distance. So, that is going to have to wait.
However, I can describe the living quarters:
It's a big cage, one of those three story ferret models. My lady of the pink eyes, the dearly departed Midnight, had lived in it at one time. There's the bottom steel floor, which I have full of CareFree bedding, with a wheel and a tarp like hammock that no one seems to like. A grating ramp that leads up to the second floor, a carpeted ledge where all the food goes. Then another grating ramp to the third floor, another ledge where I have a small bed and one of those hay balls or whatever they are inside the bed. It's clamped to the outer wall of the cage because all three rats try to push it off the ledge. That just will not do.
Last week, I had gone out to buy them a new bed because their old one (once again, a hand me down from the ferret, was falling apart and full of holes. I bought one of those huge hanging numbers, with an ugly print because that's all they had. It's vaguely cube shaped, with a hole on either end. Fleece on the inside bottom. I hung this in the big empty area in between the second and third floors.
Leading up to the hanging bed are two wooden ledges screwed into the wire walls of the cage. I can't remember the brand name of them, but they are fucking keen. About the length of my hand, with rounded edges, plain and unfinished wood. I've got them staggered so the two smaller rats can also access them without having to make big and possibly impossible jumps.
Big, impossible jumps?
Silly fucking me. I should have known better about the jumping skills of rats.
On Tuesday, I was sitting in our big overstuffed chair with Speck on my right shoulder. I've been attempting to bond with the two younger rats like I already had with Aardie. We're sitting there for a short amount of time, he's inspecting the shiny things stuck through my ear. That's when one of the cats (Baby) jumped up on the arm of the chair, on the same side as Speck.
Speck ran across my shoulders and LEAPT from my left side. And when I say leapt, I mean fucking Olympic athlete long jump shit. He cleared about four feet away from me, into the wooden cradle of stuffed animals that belong to my mother. I had a split second of "OMFGOMFGOMFG" before I saw his tail disappear.
The next twenty minutes were spent ushering the cats into my mom's room, moving the couch out from the wall, taking apart the baseboard heater, and attempting to coax Speck out from his hiding place.
In retrospect, it was funny as hell. But, my heart pounding crazily in my chest and all I could think about was the possibility of not finding him.
Sweet Jesus.
So now, the only rat who gets sit in the chair time is Aardie because he is relatively calm and stays put. Not only that, but if he attempted to run away I don't think he'd fit inside the baseboard heater because of the size of his ass (which is rather large, the spoiled brat).
It's going to take more time then I previously thought to acclimate the two babies into the out of the cage world. They still get it, in bits and pieces. But, only from a standing position.
Other rat hijinks include Aleister's discovery of the wheel.
The wheel is old and is left over from my first rat, Nicodemus, who has been dead for quite some time. Many years, even. I had put it in the cage when I first housed Aardie in there by himself, but he largely ignored it. Some rats are runners and others, like my rather rotund hairless, are not.
Aleister apparently is a runner, much to my delight.
I love to watch rats run in a wheel, especially because of the look of intense concentration they get while doing so. So, when Aleister took to running I was immensely happy.
I had, however, forgotten about how the wheel needs to be regularly oiled because it has a bad squeak. Wednesday night I went to bed early (for me) because I had to be up at six am to take my mother in for her port surgery (she's now on tap, hee!). I was having trouble sleeping anyway because I'm not used to being inactive at that hour, but when I heard the shrill "eeeek eeek eeeek" of the wheel, it became even worse.
At first I thought I'd be able to perservere. My room is down the hall, my door was half way shut, my fan was on. Nope. eeek eeeek eeeek.
At two am, I couldn't take it anymore and I groggily roused myself. Walked to the bathroom, grabbed a cotton swab, went to the kitchen, got the canola oil. Oiled the fucking wheel into submission.
Only on my walk back to my room did I realise that my brother was sitting at the computer, esconced in downloading smut, and completely ignoring the eeek eeeek eeek coming from the rat cage.
Jerk ass.
----
I've never had this many rats at once before. Hell, I never had multiple rats at ALL. So, it's interesting to observe the formulation of personalities and their pecking order. Aardie, being the oldest and the *cough* largest, is the bully of the bunch. He holds the other two down and forces grooming. He pushes them out of the way at the water bottle. He sits on them. Aleister, the albino, is fairly laid back. But, he's also the most inquisitive. He pokes his head into anything with a hole big enough (and sometimes not even big enough). He's also sneaky and steals food from Aardie when he's not paying attention. Speck is the smallest and the most nervous. He stays in the hanging bed most of the time and jumps at the smallest strange sound.
I've started enforcing the idea among the three of them that I am the alpha and will brook no disagreement from their number. Periodically during play, I will suddenly hold one of them down for a few seconds. Aardie I've even taken to flipping onto his back, since he's the one who most thinks he's the boss. They seem to be taking to this idea, just as long as I continually assert my dominance.
Time to check on the washing machines again, I still haven't been able to do my laundry.
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