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The Rat Fan Club
Rat of the Week
You can submit
your rat for Rat of the Week by sending a photo and a little story about
your rat by email or snail mail to the addresses at the bottom of the
page. Please include your name
and where you live.
Alfred and Elliot are two lovely male rats who live in England by the sea with
their human friends Philip and Marie-Aude. They are 2 years and 9 months old,
which is a grand age for two little ratties who have been living with
Mycoplasma since they were 6 months old!
Elliot loves exploring, doing acrobatics and being cuddled. He is
getting more and more cuddly with age, and he loves a good massage. You can
see a video of him chilling out and enjoying a “shoulders and
back” massage here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT7uqhNgAjo
He is quite a vocal rat and can produce a very wide range of sounds.
My favourite one is the “get off my nugget” squeak he does when
he’s eating something nice and sees Alfred coming near him. He
squeaks and turns his back to Alfred at the same time. It’s quite a
funny thing to see, as Alfred keeps trying to get to the food and
Elliot just keeps doing 180 degrees turns shouting “Eeeek!”
Alfred loves food and play-fighting. He loves to walk around the
flat doing important ratty things like shifting bits of paper,
stealing things we drop on the floor, or just sucking up all the food he
finds lying around, looking like an anteater. He also makes us laugh a lot.
His fur makes him look like he is wearing dungarees, and he is always doing
comedy things like getting stuck in a box, sliding down a cushion
backwards, or running away with a fork in his mouth jumping like a
kangaroo. When he is very happy he likes to sit next to us on the sofa and
do little poos while grinding his teeth – charming!
They both love being stroked when half asleep in their hammocks (it
makes them grind their teeth and boggle their eyes), getting a ride around
the flat on Philip’s back, making nests with paper, opening hazelnuts
and cuddling up to each other to sleep. They have travelled to many places
with us. They have even holidayed in a bed and breakfast where they
had their own bedroom! They found Scotland okay, but
didn’t like London much.
We are so happy that we managed to get their respiratory problems
under control, and that we are able to see them getting old peacefully,
gradually slowing down, taking lots of naps like two old grandads…
they have been making us happy every day since they moved in with us, and
we feel very lucky to have such fun, gentle and loving creatures in our
lives.
A note on rats’ health and
their respiratory problems, which I feel very strongly about: After a bit
of searching we found amazing vets to look after our ratties, We have been
fighting back Mycoplasma for now more than 2 years with a mix of doxycycline,
Baytril and Corvental D, which we give to them twice daily at the moment.
So it is definitely possible for pet rats to live a long, happy and healthy
life with Mycoplasma if treated with the correct antibiotics (they have
been taking antibiotics almost constantly for over 2 years and are
completely fine). Debbie’s
booklet Rat
Health Care has proved a very useful
tool for us and our vet.
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