Oh, Rats!

The major thing in our house that keeps everyone occupied these days is the baby rats - all 12 of them! With 2 parents, and another young male keeping the father rat company in his cage that's 15 rats altogether.  It's funny, because 6 months ago if you had asked me if I would ever consider getting a pet rat my answer would have been a flat-out "No!" but possibly a mouse for Master B maybe when he's a teenager, since he's crazy about mice. Hmmmm.

These little ones are getting cuter by the day though, they opened their eyes on Thursday, so they've got a new lease on life now that they can actually see what they are doing and they LOVE exploring the cage, and spend a lot of time cuddled up with each other inside those cardboard tubes in the middle of paper towel rolls.  They are now covered with a nice thick coat of hair and they are learning to climb quite well.

Consider what they looked like as newborns

And now

The kids love holding them, er...usually only one at a time (the big one is a guinea-pig, by the way)

Super-cute wriggly balls of fluff

So, in about 3 and a half weeks, these little guys will be weaned and getting sold to the pet store, although we will keep one of the pure white females to breed with our pure white male.  Anybody want a pet rat?

As an aside, we bought yet another rodent today.  A little female guinea-pig to be my pet, and to be company for Miss A's lonely guinea-pig.