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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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