Rats are best pet by far!! (Rats)

Member Name: linzeelou

Product:	Rats
Date:	09/06/09 (27 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very entertaining

Disadvantages: Stinky houses sometimes

My first real pet of my own was a rat when i was 13ish. My sister had wanted one for ages but my aunt bought me one instead. My sister wasnt at all impressed but she got over it. Poor little Basil only lasted a couple of weeks, the pet shop had let him go too early but they were great and gave me another for free. Louis's parents were show rats, white with a strong black line down their backs but his wasnt straight so he couldnt be shown, so i got him!!

We had a pretty big cage for him, with a wheel and shelf above it. It had loads of space for his little house of tissue paper. The guy at the pet store advised us to handle him as much as possible to get him tame so i got him out a couple of times a day until he got bigger.

Rats are really smart and one day i ended up building him a little maze in my bed room with some food placed in certain places and he did really well with it and when he found the food he started clicking his teeth. (Rat sign of happiness).

He started getting really big and he would just sit on my shoulders at the back of my hair quite happily clicking away. We even shared breakfast together sometimes. Id be eating my cereal with him on my shoulder and every now and again he'd run down and steal some...he wasnt silly, he knew what he wanted and was cheeky enough to just take it.

One day the family ordered a pizza and again he was on my shoulder. I wondered out of the toppings on the pizza he would take given the choice.
I laid out 1 of each topping on floor for him and what does he do? He runs past all the toppings and tries to take the whole pizza before realising it was way too heavy for him.

Rats are also one of the cleanest pets ive ever had, yes their cages do get stinky if you dont clean them out enough but we used to do it once a week. 1 big issue i do bring up though is choice of bedding for a rat. Tissue paper and toilet roll tubes are great for them to make their houses out of but i would strongly advice not using any sawdust, no matter how fine. When Louis was 3 years old (which is OLD for a rat) he started getting sores/ blisters on his feet from the sawdust and caused infections so the vet gave him little rat socks to stop this. He wasnt so impressed with them though.

Please dont think Rats are horrible and dirty because they cant be more different than that, well pet rats anyways. They're loving and do show affection, they can be trained well and become very tame. Louis was a member of the family without a doubt and provided us with a lot of laughs.

Summary: Dont disgard rats as pets!