Other Rat Pages:

Rats Page

Mr. Rat's "Rat Haiku"

Rat Poetry

Rat Photos

Progress Notes

Rainbow Bridge

Pets Page
 

 Continue Reading about our Ratty Tales below....  then check out my Rat Haiku.  After you are done, check out some of our action photos.

 Our New Home

Though it wasn't a bad place, we quickly realized that the cage the so called "genius" at PetsMart had sold us would be completely unsatisfactory.  It was rather smallish, and lacked the stimulating environment we needed to fuel our creative genius.  Obviously, a larger cage was needed...but how to accomplish this?  Mr. Scabbers, ever so crafty, quickly took matters into his own paws.  Somewhat in violation of the well known rat regulation to "never escape from your cage while the humans are watching", he easily liberated himself from the confines of the cage through the bars (yes it is true, if a rat's head can fit through, so can their whole body).  This caused quite a commotion I can tell you.  We were quickly locked away into the family's dog kennel carrier for the night.  The following day, a bigger cage with smaller bar spacing arrived and we were home free.

New Friends

You can imagine our surprise and delight when we discovered that our family's home was also the home of several other animals of various species.  Things were off to a bit of a shaky start when Scabbers accidentally mistook the dog's nose for something to eat and took a big  bite out of it.  Luckily, we were quickly able to work out co-existence agreements with all the pet residents and we are now on friendly terms, albeit from a distance.

Here I am making peace with Laura, the dog.

Scabbers earlier escape trick benefited us more than we originally realized.  The woman spent tireless hours researching our needs on the internet.  Really, she became obsessed.  To our delight, a glorious new home arrived only a month into our stay.  It was the best of the best, a Martin's Cage!  It was also filled with numerous toys and hiding places, and was even larger than our existing home.  The woman began visiting numerous rat related websites and rat posting forums.  It was obvious, she was firmly planted on our side.  As big of a success as this was, we had made little progress on our biggest challenge....."Tom".

Troubled Times

Although we were initially greeted by Tom with little more than indifference, we could feel the tension growing as we ran to and fro nightly on the great playground known as "the couch".  Tom seemed to tense up each time one of us would dive into his shirt or stick a nose into his ear.  Things went from bad to worse when a suspicious patch of red, round, itchy skin began forming on the man's arm.  He eyed us with a look of disdain as he scratched feverishly at it night after night.  Dawn developed a similar patch of skin on her neck...interestingly enough, right where I liked to take my nap.  This unfortunate circumstance, which was totally beyond our control, did nothing to help us with project CHEW and GNAW.  When I heard the hushed remarks about "Ringworm" I feared the worst.  However, Dawn was able to cast enough doubt as to the true source of the infection that we were actually never completely blamed (Sorry Pumpkin...better you than us).  In any case, the situation cleared up after several weeks and no further problems of that nature have come up, thank goodness.

Soon after the nasty ringworm incident, as it came to be known, we heard Tom making noises about "allergies".  This was not a good sign and was another setback.  Once again, Dawn quickly jumped into action.  Realizing that our bedding could be the source of the allergens, she rushed out to purchase a bad of CareFresh bedding...and threw in a couple of good qualify air purifiers for good measure.

However, these events damaged our reputation with the man.  He began looking displeased at our presence on the couch.  He began sitting on the floor and then complaining about his back.  CHEW and GNAW was looking bleak.  Our luck abruptly changed one day again, however...thanks to Dawn.  She felt guilty that she was the cause of the man's suffering, and began staying upstairs with us in the evening.  Tom, motivated to have his wife downstairs with him instead of upstairs surfing the internet for hours on end, began making overtures of acceptance toward us.  Soon, we were back on the couch downstairs happily running to and fro once again.

Still, the man has not come yet to love and adore us.  He is going to be more of a challenge than we first thought.  No matter, we have a few more tricks up our tails.....

Signing off for Now....

Keep updated on Mr. Rat and Scabbers progress toward CHEW and GNAW by visiting their Ratty Research Progress Notes

                Rat's Page                                  Home