Meet Cute: The Rats

Zevran

Iron Bull

Dorian

I have wanted rats most of my life, but was simply never allowed to have them. My mother tolerated me having hamsters and a pair of gerbils once, but never rats because she had a rodent phobia and had the outdated notion that they were dirty, disgusting sewer dwellers that didn't belong as pets.

When I finally moved away from her I tried to be responsible and get my rats from a breeder rather than a pet store, but no dice. I was living in the country, the breeder was over two hours away and I just couldn't justify going that far to get some rats with the budget I was living on at the time.

Then, at long last, in early May of 2017 I moved in with my current roommate @bluebeaniejean and that all changed. We were at the pet store actually looking to get supplies for a dog we knew we were going to get eventually and I was looking at the rats lamenting that I'd never had any of my own. We weren't intending to get them, of course, but they had a sign that they had 3 female rats that they wanted to adopt out together because they were the last of the litter. Most people want pairs because rats are social and should be adopted in pairs or more, and few are willing to take three at a time.

These guys were almost a year old and no one had wanted them, and the store wanted something like $12 or $15 for the trio. We decided to say what the heck let's get them, and on May 30th of 2017 we became proud rat owners :D

At first we did try to keep them in a cage meant for ferrets, with a plastic bottom tray and metal bars, plastic landings with ladders and all that. But the trouble came first when they started kicking the litter out of their cage and kicking their poo off the landings, and then when they figured out they could slip through the bars. We woke up more than one morning to find them lose in our office space where we kept them, and worse yet the little rascals had managed to get up on my desk and knock a few things over including breaking one of my unicorn figurines ):

We got it figured out, though, and basically their new cage has enough space for them but it's also escape-proof so we won't have any more of them hiding out under things and breaking stuff on our desks.

The rats themselves are just as interesting as the characters they are named after. Rats are intelligent creatures to begin with, as proven by their aforementioned escape antics, but truly these guys seem to have their own little quirks.

Zevran is the shiest of them all. He hides in the plastic castle when we open the cage, and wants to dig into our shirts to hide when he sits on our shoulders. It's actually annoying because of the sharp claws, but we manage.

Iron Bull is outgoing and always the first to want to get out of a situation. We open the cage and he's the first one reaching to get out. If he's on our shoulders we can't sit, he'll make the four foot leap from our backs to the table their current cage sits on and try to climb down our arms to wreak havoc all over our desks.

Dorian is more shy, preferring to sit still and be calculating of things. He doesn't hide when we open the cage, and he will lean up to see what's going on since he's curious, but he doesn't seem to want to actively seek getting out and the like. On our shoulders he's still, wanting to just observe the world.

These guys were the first of our fur babies, we've had them now for just over 8 months and they often ride around on our shoulders. Since I recently got a camera for streaming I even like to let them sit there and be on stream with me sometimes too, so if you ever catch me over on DLive on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6pm-8pm Central Time sometimes one of these little guys might be helping me play <3

Any questions not answered above are welcome, I will do my best to answer them :)