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  1. #21
    There's a lot of people giving good information on this thread.

    But to the people saying that rats are bad pets, that they "breed like crazy and spread disease" Please for F*** sake stop spreading your ignorance.

    Rats are among the smartest rodents and like I said the least likely to bite as they are far more domesticated than hamsters and gerbils especially if they have been hand raised.

    They do breed like crazy but only if you are stupid enough to have a male and female together and TRUST me it's not hard to tell a male from a female as the males have extremely prominent man parts.

    Domesticated rats aka Fancy rats also do not commonly carry diseases as long as you are careful about where you get them from. You do run a risk of getting a rat with an illness if you get one that came from a rat farm to be snake food. But even if you end up with a sick rat their illnesses do not spread to people and are usually curable with oral antibiotics that you can get from your vet same as any other house hold pet.

    Their sinuses are extremely sensitive and they can be prone to respiratory infections but as long as you are using a non dusty bedding like yesterdays news, aspen or carefresh and you don't smoke around your rat then these issues can easily be avoided.

    If you'd like a community that knows a TON about rats and can help you with more questions goosemoose.com is my favorite rat forum. There are rat breeders, rescuers and owners there that have a lot of info to share.

  2. #22
    I enjoyed walking into the garage the other day to the screams of two rats terrified, stuck in the glue board I had placed there I then proceeded to tie up the glue board in a plastic bag with the 2 rats still alive in it and I put it in the garbage bag that went to the dump later that day. They probably starved to death, but I utterly despise rats. I don't hate animals. I have many pets that I care about, but I just hate rats. I grew up in the city and I live in the city where they are viewed as nasty critters. I know some people keep them as pets, call me ignorant if you want, but I just hate rats, just because of what they are.

    Sorry, couldn't resist saying that in this thread. I'm expecting much hate now.

    User was infracted for this post.
    Last edited by mmoc0fc091fcb6; 2011-06-26 at 07:04 PM.
    Why am I back here, I don't even play these games anymore

    The problem with the internet is parallel to its greatest achievement: it has given the little man an outlet where he can be heard. Most of the time however, the little man is a little man because he is not worth hearing.

  3. #23
    Deleted
    I have 3 female rats in one cage, so they don't breed.
    All are bought from official rat vendor (certified) and are pedigree. I not recommend buying rats in corner pet store, cause they can have genetic diseases (due in-breeding) or even schizophrenia.
    Look for certified breeders on rat forums, there you'll find a lot more info than on WoW forum

    Edit: Oh, I forgot one thing. Be sure if you want them and deal with some problems. Mine and my GFs problem was that our rats did bite any wires/cords and as a result we lost 3 cell chargers, 2 mouses (my Razer, QQ) and one USB cable. Then we learned to hide all wires before we let them out from their cage.
    Last edited by mmoc3a217ad312; 2011-06-26 at 07:00 PM.

  4. #24
    Vizzle there's a big difference between the rats you hate vs. the ones people keep. Also, why use a glueboard? Use something wich atleast kills em without pain? ^_^

  5. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Sidone View Post
    Vizzle there's a big difference between the rats you hate vs. the ones people keep. Also, why use a glueboard? Use something wich atleast kills em without pain? ^_^
    Don't feed the trolls. He's just trying to upset people.

    NVM. He got banned anyways. I wish they would remove his post as well.

  6. #26
    I had several female rats over the years, two at a time...they lived about 3 years and loved escaping from their cage. They'd get out and tear up everything in site. I loved those gals. Even when they were eating my pictures. Sadly allergies led to having no more, kept getting itchy red bumps when their claws touched me

  7. #27
    Deleted
    Please remove Vizzle's post as well, it's obviously there just to annoy people and responding to it is something I nearly did.

    I would advice not getting pet rats. They're fun for a while but they just become a pain in the ass, no matter how attached to them you become. As for your dog, if you keep the dog and the rats seperate it shouldn't be a problem. I have three cats and I owned them when I owned my two pet rats as well. The cats always wanted to see the cage. I made sure the rats had a room of their own, they stayed in a small room we had next to our garage with a door, and we had a shelf unit placed up to keep them high up so the cats couldn't reach them anyway.

    Rats can eat almost anything. In fact, they WILL eat EVERYTHING. But some things aren't very good for them. I fed mine the typical types of rats food you can buy from any decent pet shop and I also gave them dried banana slices as treats, you should be able to buy bags of these from pet shops as well.

    Remember even if it's just one rat, it needs plenty of space. My cage for two rats had a small house with some wool stuffed inside of it. Rats love to pull the wool all over the place when it's stuck in tight places. The cage also had a wheel, but they never used it from what I saw. Just make sure there's some toys for them to play with, as well as floors. It's better to have a cage with floors because it allows them to run around a lot more. Get them stairs for the floors. They'll never used them once you've bought them though, they'll always climb up the sides of the cage then.

    There's not too much important stuff on owning a rat. They're social, fun little creatures, but also more hassle to look after than pets like dogs and cats. And you should be looking to clean out their cage once every few days, else it starts to smell, and that's not nice.

    DO NOT let them loose in your room if you have a lot of wires though. EVER. They WILL chew your wires, and then everything you own will break.

    But be careful with them. My first one died... well... let's put it this way. The other one ATE him. I still don't know why. They had plenty of food, they were clean and healthy as far as I knew. Then suddenly I come down to check on them and the smaller black one is dead in his house, flesh torn away and... it was pretty gruesome. The second one escaped one day very suddenly while I had him out in the garden for some fresh air. He just ran for it into the bushes and away. Next day and the cats had brought him back for me as a gift. Such lovely creatures those kitties.

    Remember rats ARE a hassle. They're not just there because you decided to one day. You need to think about this first. As long as you have the time to play with them a lot and enough time to clean them out every now and then, you should be fine. Don't be sat on your Xbox or whatever if your rats are dying to play with you.

    Good luck with your decision anyway!

    Edit: Rats are adorable, social and very intelligent creatures. Anyone that can only refer to them as vermin need to learn.

    Edit 2: Another thing. Rats are known to get very lonely whenever they're left alone, so if you can't be paying attention to them a lot, they'll get lonely and it's been known that they can get depressed. It happens in all rodents I think. So that's a good excuse to have two instead of one, and the reason I had two as well.
    Last edited by mmocc5c312fa0d; 2011-06-26 at 07:31 PM.

  8. #28
    "But be careful with them. My first one died... well... let's put it this way. The other one ATE him. I still don't know why. They had plenty of food, they were clean and healthy as far as I knew. Then suddenly I come down to check on them and the smaller black one is dead in his house, flesh torn away and... it was pretty gruesome. "


    Your other rat probably didn't actually kill the dead one especially if they were already bonded. Sometimes rats just die suddenly even if they havn't been showing obvious signs of illness.

    But rats are very nit picky about their environment and keeping it clean and have been known to eat another dead rat to try to keep the den clean so to speak. They do this in the wild and its not uncommon. Fortunately I only had to experience this with one of my pairs of rats. The rest of my rats I was able to see signs that they might pass soon as was able to remove them from the rest of the colony.

  9. #29
    Deleted
    I did figure that he probably didn't get killed by the other rat. They had shared a cage and been together since birth, they came from the same litter, they were brothers. Although the one that died was a lot smaller and skinnier than the other, he always had been. Randall was skinny and small and Drae had always been the bigger more 'buff' rat. My mum told me he probably killed him for being the 'runt' but to me it made no sense that he would just suddenly kill him. They never had scraps, fights, heck, I never even saw them play fight very much.

    I didn't know about the environment thing though, that's interesting. It kinda looked to me like he'd pulled Randall apart though and just left him, poor thing.

  10. #30
    Deleted
    I wouldn't recommend having only one rat, cause they are really sociable and lone ratling would be lonely and bored if you don't give it enough attention.
    And regarding nutrition, don't give them anything with a lot of Vitamin C (like citrus fruits), it's harmful for them.

  11. #31
    I just thought of this but it's very important.

    Most of the rat "food" they sell in pet stores is crap. Anything that is mostly seeds and nuts is god awful bad for them and will just make them fat.

    They need a high quality lab block. Petsmart sells Mazuri in 2 pound bags but you can get it much cheaper if you buy it in bulk. I got a 50lb bag from my vet for 35$. That amount of food should last 2 rats probably most of their life lol.

  12. #32
    Legendary! Collegeguy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chaoyll View Post
    Remember rats ARE a hassle. They're not just there because you decided to one day. You need to think about this first. As long as you have the time to play with them a lot and enough time to clean them out every now and then, you should be fine. Don't be sat on your Xbox or whatever if your rats are dying to play with you.
    I dont see how they are a hassle. Compared to dogs and cats they are very clean. If your dog makes a naughty on your carpet, its a stain. If you have a pet bird, they will constantly make little droppings on your shoulder(thats a stain), but rats feces is incredibly easy to clean up. Rat naughty's are tiny, solid, rock pebbles. They are hard and dont retain the moisture so it doesnt go into the carpet. All you do is vacuum and thats it. Vacuuming up dog poop would be impossible.

    Also a cat and dog can tear apart a room far more than a rat can. My cat would rip apart my comic books, scratch the corners of the wall with their claws, and ruin window blinds. My rat was never that disastrous. A dog takes a lot more responsibility and attention than a rat or a cat. I dont see the hassle honestly.

  13. #33
    Before you go ahead and buy a rat i urge you to watch the film Willard

  14. #34
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Collegeguy View Post
    My cat would rip apart my comic books, scratch the corners of the wall with their claws, and ruin window blinds.
    ... Then I dunno what kinda crazy breed of cat you have. Mine explore at night and sleep on my bed all day.

  15. #35
    Haha idd. My rat loved lettuce. Also sheets of paper... She shreds it up and made a "nest" of it Works better then a shredder. Best pet i ever got. Wish they could last like cats/dogs.

  16. #36
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    I used to have two rats named Frasier and Niles. Wonderful little creatures. Strange, though, they both died within a month of each other. Both were probably 3 years old at that point. Very social animals. I was sad to see them go.

  17. #37
    My pet rat died yesterday. It was a rough month for her. She started to get a big bump on her right front leg a few months ago and it just went down hill from there. I've read that female rats are prone to tumors and its something you need to think about before purchasing one.

  18. #38
    Morning all,

    I have two male rats one called Bandit (Brown Rat) and one called Gizmo (Black Rat) they are brothers and love play fighting with each other and jumping over me. Rats make great pets, very social, always wanting attention, loving and mischievous. You can train them to do certain things and they learn very quickly, for example; I’ve trained my Rats to go to toilet in one corner of the cage so it’s easier to clean, it’s quite easy to do and there is plenty of training guides online about it.

    If you get Rats expect to get them out at least 3 times a week if you get bored easily get a hamster or something.

    Oh and they are very clean animals after being handled they always wash themselves of your human smell heh, and they love ripping up news paper at 3:00 in the bloody morning...

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