Colony status update

I'd forgotten I even had this blog. Will try to update it more regularly in future.

This is just a quick rundown of the status of our rat colonies.

Boys

I can't quite remember the order but both Cyclops and Gambit passed away as oldish men with dodgy chests, which is fairly usual for poor little rats.

Then Jon got a very bad tumour on his throat. At first we assumed it was an abscess, it grew so large and quickly. But it turned out to be a tumour that was leaking blood and the lump was full of blood not puss. Poor little thing was put to sleep. I never got to say a proper goodbye as I'd expected him to come home from a pretty routine operation.

Fortunately Bran hasn't been left in a cage alone. With Jon gone he settled in quite quickly with his remaining two brothers and the youngsters. Who are now something like twice his size. And Bran is not tiny.

Other than snuffles, the boy colony seems to be doing okay at the moment.

Girls

Again I'm not quite certain of order.

We adopted a girl and a neutered boy, Branflake and Malcolm, from a girl in Bristol who didn't have the time to look after all her rats now she was at university. They settled in with the girls almost immediately.

Aria had a fairly traumatic vet trip in which she had two abscesses and one tumour removed. However she's bounced back remarkably, and there's no sign of more tumours so far.

Malcolm had a huge abscess under his chin which eventually burst cleanly. But then managed to get infected again. We thought baytril and cleaning were doing the job. He seemed to heal fine. Then, several weeks later we found him dead in the cage. Not sure if his death was connected to the abscess. He'd been behaving normally and seemed in perfectly good condition. It was totally surprising and unexpected.

One of the others also got an abscess (can't remember who) but that seemed to clear up all on its own.

Meanwhile Sansa seemed to stop cleaning herself.  Other than a filthy underside she was completely fine, always at the bars for food. Still pretty much unhandleable, but better than she had been, we couldn't really clean her. Then two days ago Marc was finally able to wash her. She didn't even struggle. But he found a black lump under her eye which looked suspiciously like the skin cancer Akuma, one of my late rats from a few years ago, had. Last night she was suddenly at death's door and I was able to cuddle her for the first time ever. She passed away overnight. Fortunately she went pretty quickly.

And finally, Beneath a Steel Sky appears to have a dislocated hip. She doesn't seem to be in any pain and she's getting about okay, but it just adds to the problems we've had in the poor girl colony.

Boys intro part ten million

So it occurred to me I hadn't done any blog updates in forever, and then discovered that I'd written a 'boys intro part 1' and never concluded it.

Well, the conclusion is that I now have six boys (poor Nightcrawler died some months ago) living in the bottom of a Savic Royale Suite (SRS) - Cyclops, Gambit, Robb, Rickon, No More Mr Nice Guy, and Awkward Customer. This is a giant of a cage and absolutely wonderful. Had Bran and Jon got on with them the eight of them would share the whole cage. As they don't, these two are on their own in a Furet Plus (which I want to downsize slightly). The top of the SRS contains the four girls: Sansa, Arya, Broken Sword, and Beneath a Steel Sky. It's a pain having to have an extra cage and long term I want to just have the SRS, but this is the only way to work it with this many animals and their personalities.

I won't be able to get any more rats for quite some time. Next up will be another pair of girls - but probably close to Christmas time. I doubt I'll get more boys until Cyclops and Gambit decide to finally depart, but the two are going strong despite lots of snuffles. Cyclops is still the loveliest, lickiest rat around. Awkward Customer is absolutely mad - he gets very erratic if you take him out of the cage, and his tilty head swivels backwards and forwards constantly.

Really happy with all the boys now, and all of the girls but Sansa. Sansa has improved over time but still hates being picked up with a vengeance and has to be handled very carefully.

Boy intros part 1

It's been a fun couple of weeks trying to introduce the two Bongo Fury boys to the oldies. At first I didn't think we'd ever manage it. But slowly, in stages, it seems to be working.

First I got Gambit in with the boys. No More Mr Nice Guy squealed and squealed and squealed. But eventually he settled down. Then we were able to introduce Cyclops, and the four were quite happy together.

Introductions with the rest didn't go so well at first. There were squeals and scuffles and a few cut tales. Then we swapped Gambit and Cyclops for Robb and Rickon, who are both pretty calm boys. These four were soon happy together.

We tried a few more goes at having the full group together at times, but No More Mr Nice Guy was constantly squealing and starting fights. I was seriously starting to work out rat maths and who best to put where.

Today I let them all in together and why the little boy still squealed, the others showed no interest in fighting, and Nightcrawler managed to ignore the squeaks long enough to temporary join Cyclops and the little ones in a hammock.

It was daytime though, so everyone was kinda calm. Things got a little more active this evening, although it still seemed to be mostly No More Mr Nice Guy making lots of noise for no reason. So we decided confined quarters might be a good idea. Bran and Jon, the two who NMMNG doesn't like, with Cyclops (for company) and the two little ones are all in a carrier beside me. They're chewing away on food, sniffing about, but otherwise seem to be pretty calm. We'll see what happens when they all go back in the cage together.

Introductions

I used to blog regularly about my rats, but this seems to have dried up in recent years. So behold, a new blog to write about rats in!

This post would probably be better with photos in it, but for now I'm going to force you to use your imagination. I am sure photos will come at some point in the future. Possibly lots of points.

I'm me. I am a rat owner. I have a bad case of GMR - a common ailment of rat owners, and short for 'Get More Rats'. But no more. My rat quota is full! At least for the next six to twelve months.

The current household consists of the following, in order of age:

Cyclops: born in the closing months of 2010, Cyclops is some form of grey dumbo rat - too dark for a silver, I think, too light for a blue. That may make him a dove, but I'm no good at rat varieties. He has a white stripe close to his one eye. This eye is ruby, the other is black. That's why he gained the name of the best X-Man in the world ever.

Gambit: a pink eyed white, acquired in around April 2011. The brother of the late Beast (an aggressive sod who spent his final days with some girls, and died too young).

Nightcrawler, another last remaining brother. His brothers: Havoc and Vulcan, were impossible. Nightcrawler, however, is a lovely boy. He's an agouti hooded. I got him somewhere around May/June.

Bran, Robb, Rickon and Jon are the Stark brothers. There were obtained somewhere near the end of the year. Bran is a black hooded. Robb and Rickon are both black with white bellies (Rickon's has slightly more appearing on the sides - this is the only way to tell the difference between the two). Jon is agouti.

Then we come to the girls.

Sansa and Arya, the Stark girls, are the oldest. Sansa is a dumbo Himalayan with a head tilt. Arya a Siamese. Sansa is unfortunately very difficult to handle and doesn't come out very much. Got these some time in February 2012.

The latest arrivals from April 2012 on the girls side are Broken Sword - a black hooded with an almost unbroken stripe down the back, and Beneath a Steel Sky - who's the same colour as Cyclops. Both are dumbos. Steel has a short tail for some reason - guessing an accident when she was very young.

All the above are rescues.

Yesterday I acquired my first breeder rats, since my last lot died in the first half of last year. The boys are Bongo Fury Awkward Customer, a blue with a head tilt and because of this serious balance issues. And a Russian Dove Agouti called Bongo Fury No More Mr Nice Guy. This little fella has a lot to live up to - I had the first ever Bongo Fury Russian Dove Agouti, the wonderful Guile, who was absolutely amazing. These two are ridiculously friendly, as you'd expect from breeder rats. Particularly Bongo Fury rats which are the best rats in the world ever! (Seriously. Just a shame they have to travel from Ireland to get here).