Unsolicited Advice

Did you think I would let an eating holiday pass without decorating the cage? Hahahaha, no. Behold, the results of a trip to the Dollar Tree and way too much unmonitored daydreaming time at work. A pair of purple skeleton hand shot glasses (plastic!) full of hors d'oevres for Les Fromages. We've recently discovered Cheddar doesn't care too much about sweets, so I gave the candy corn a miss (also wouldn't have given them enough to fill the shot glass -- there are limits, much as they hate that thought), so instead they got banana chips and toasted pumpkin seeds. Where did I get teeny pumpkin seeds, you ask? Just wait. A view from the floor, showing a black photo box for nesting, a Halloween bowl of off-brand cereal for snacking, and a PIDER BASKIT for lurking! The plastic spider baskets are the perfect shape, basically the base of the perennial-favorite sputnik, but need to be covered with fabric so the rats don't get their wee toeses caught. Les Fromages' cage f...

For those who may have missed it over on Instagram, I took in two younger rattos in August. A nice young lady on one of my message boards had lost her housing and had to re-home her critters. Cheddar and Cheese came all the way up from New Jersey to meet me in Providence, and take an interminable train ride back up to Boston, where they were installed in the top floor of Schloß Ratter. Les Fromages seemed not terrible fussed by the move, and downright excited by all the rain that weekend, and mostly ignore Casper's attempts to annoy the neighbors from below. (Mickie does not care. Mickie cares about very little, other than hammocks, snacks, and getting proper scritches right behind the ears. Mickie is very happy with his life, and we would all do well to learn from this.) A few weeks ago, Les Fromages started making snoof  noises. This, like most other rat malfunctions, is pretty easy to diagnose. Itchy rat? Probably mites! Bathe rat, clean cage, apply kitten Revolution. Somebody g...