..::Rat~Chat::.. {Note On Page 11}

[Saracirce]

Would kind of bedding/what's the name of the bedding?

Honestly, I wouldn't put too much stock in pet store employees. Often, they just tell you whatever they can in order to make a sale and don't actually know what they're talking about. The knowledgeable, honest employees are few and far between. Look up a bunch of rattie care sheets online.

[smart cat]

I was looking in the wrong category, sorry. X3
It's Crumbled Paper Small Animal Bedding

[Saracirce]

http://www.petco.com/product/114718/Pla ... image_link
This?

It doesn't sound too bad and recycled paper is generally recommended though I've usually seen pelleted/shredded recommended. Is there a lot of dust in the bedding? If there isn't then it might be something they picked up at the pet store. It's not that uncommon for animals in big chain stores to get sick. How long did you have them before they started sneezing?

[smart cat]

There's not dust in it I have seen, and I actually only got them about 6 days ago. The very day I saw them sneezing, I brought them over to the vet. ^-^

[pij4p4i3o]

There's not dust in it I have seen, and I actually only got them about 6 days ago. The very day I saw them sneezing, I brought them over to the vet. ^-^

Yeah I took my baby to the vet as well, they gave him some antibiotics.

Though the nurse or whatever was so shocked, I overheard her say, "I thought you said CAT, you meant RAT? Its got a big long TAIL, and it pooped on the table!"
The hilarity. Handle animals all day and can't deal with a little poop?
Perhaps I'm a terrible person, but I do think it would have been funny if he'd pee'd on her. She would have thrown a FIT.
The Vet was just like, "Lol, yeah, rats do that."

[smart cat]

Yeah I took my baby to the vet as well, they gave him some antibiotics.

Though the nurse or whatever was so shocked, I overheard her say, "I thought you said CAT, you meant RAT? Its got a big long TAIL, and it pooped on the table!"
The hilarity. Handle animals all day and can't deal with a little poop?
Perhaps I'm a terrible person, but I do think it would have been funny if he'd pee'd on her. She would have thrown a FIT.
The Vet was just like, "Lol, yeah, rats do that."

XD Yeah, se'll have to get used to more than rat poop. And it sounds like she would throw a big fit if he did that. My local vet is really nice, they seem to be really understanding. Usually people are like, "Oh it's just a rodent there's thousands of them." But my local vet treats every animal with the same respect. :3 And they bring their little furry friends to work, I love to pet all the cats. ^^

[Charms]

Huzzah! A rat thread! c: How wonderful. I apologize for the wonky images ahead of time. I figure it's easier to have them here than numerous links.
I'll share some pictures below but might as well say how I got into them because it's a bit strange...you'll probably want to skip over this if you don't like the idea of feeder rats, but the outcome is happy regardless.
I own two Ball Python snakes and we used to feed them knocked out rats (I know, we stopped doing that once we actually began to like and own rats) and the store we bought them from...wasn't very good, I guess.
One day we brought them home rats and before feeding them one of them was still moving around. I am still very, very mad at that old pet store. They also had given us a female instead of the usual male so we ended up keeping her and nurturing her back to health. She lost a tooth (it regrew) I think but otherwise was fine. That one rat started an obsession for them, so we then got two boys, made a mistake and had them be buddies, then ended up with 13 babies. It just continued from there--after them we tried three females (from that one pet store that made the feeding mistake...another mistake) and they were all pregnant and we ended up with 32 rats (some of them were bald)! The babies are just so adorable. ;u; But both of those generations were a few years back.
These babies are from the original 13:

I don't think I have pictures on my computer of the generation of 32 rats. I'm also lacking pictures of the two first Dumbos I ever had, but I've images of my most recent darlings. They're very old now.

This was Alice, and she had to be my favorite female rat ever.
She was such a character. She passed away a little bit ago, only under a year of age.
We don't know what was wrong with her, whatever she had hit quickly.
I was really surprised by how close her and I got.

•
And then there are the 2012/2013 boys:

They're all shown in the corn picture, except for one we got after that. They concluded of Pierre, Castello, Dexter, Romeo, Toby, Mousse, Baby, and Ronnie. Unfortunately we only have Pierre, Toby, Mousse, and Baby around today. :c But we have two newer boys:

Wesley and Bentley! Who look exactly the same...but we've dotted their tail tips to determine who is who. ;)

That's the basis of my rat history c; And so this post isn't entirely useless, I've got a question to anyone:

Do any of your rats obsess over a certain food? As you may infer, mine love corn. It's kind of a daily tradition to feed them bowls of corn, and if you don't give them corn one morning, they sit around and judge you, and you can totally tell. Anyone else have a routine like this with a different food? ^^

[smart cat]

Bhaaaw der so cute. ;w;
And my rats obsess over treats, but I don't really count that as a food. But I do give each of them about one or two every other day. :3 I was told from a rat owner that treats are 10% of a rat's diet. I don't really know if that's true; the person who told me it worked at a Petco. But not all pet store employees are bad, but meh. I also have a gerbil and he is crazy about sunflower seeds. X3
(Don't worry I don't let the rats get close to little my little gerbil.)

[LissaJo]

Luna never had babies.. But we did end up getting her a new rat buddy! We chose a small female and they were instant best friends! The new girl is still name pending even though we have had her 2 weeks. My husband likes the name Snuggles (she is the color of the snuggle bear) but i like Brooks (mousy off of greys anatomys real name)

Pic of them! https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos- ... 2360_o.jpg

[LissaJo]

Welp the new girl has been sneezing and after a round of tetracyclin that didnt work, we had a vet visit and now we have some new antibiotics. Luna is sneezing a little so both are being treated