So yeah, I have rats. At the moment, I have seven rats. Six females and a neutered male, together in a rather large cage.
This is Slug, the neutered male.
How he came to live with me is a bit of a sad story. I had the same veterinarian, Dr. Jan, for all of my pets for about 15 years. When I started coming in with rats she fell in love and started keeping rats for herself again which she had done in the past. This picture is Dr. Jan in her office with one of my rats that I used to have, Peanut, on her shoulder.
Last spring she adopted a couple of young male rats to be friends with one of her old rats who had lost his brother. Rats are very social creatures and have to have more than one friend with them or they will be very depressed. But shortly after she adopted those young rats she was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. I knew she was sick but no one expected it to progress as fast as it did. One day last August I received a call from the vet's office. The vet tech assistant told me that Dr. Jan wanted me to care for her rats when she died. Dr. Jan was in Hospice Care, and they didn't think she would live much longer. I agree to take her rats and arrived at her farm the next day to load up the rats and all of their possessions. Before I even had them set up in their cages and ready to go at my own house, I got a phone call saying that Dr. Jan had died.
It was difficult to make room for the cages for the boys because they could not go in the same cage as my girls or I would have lots and lots of baby rats. I set up a big cage for them where I could find room. A couple of months after they all moved to my house, the oldest rat died, simply of old age. Rats do not live very long. Usually around 2 years or so. His name was Big. He really wasn't very big... But his brother that I never met was named Deal. Big Deal. My vet's sense of humor...
This was Big when he was very tired and old.
That just left the two younger twin brothers who were so identical in every way that I had to draw on one of their tails with colored markers so I would know which one was which.
Dr Jan had named them Hank and Sluggo. I am guessing that is an American baseball reference. But I never even got a chance to know which one was supposed to be which since they were identical and she died before I could talk to her about them. I ended up changing their names slightly. Hank is sort of a nickname for Henry, so I chose Henry as his name instead. Sluggo was just so lazy that I tended to call him Slug instead. They had been the sweetest rats I have ever met.
Very suddenly, in November I think, Henry became sick. He died 2 weeks later because we misdiagnosed his illness the first week and then had a shortage of the medication for another week after that once we knew what was wrong. We did not get the medication in time to help him. He was pretty young and that made it be very surprising. But that left Slug all alone. I decided to have him neutered in January so that he could go into the same cage with the girls and no longer be alone but I could also have more space in the house again without so many cages.
It took quite a long time for all of the girl rats to accept him into their cage. Almost a month! But everyone gets along now!
Pictures of the girls:
Thanks for reading this long story about my rats!
