My rat defies all logic...
Winter brings forced air heating, and after a few months of this, my girls developed the sniffles. They made their first vet visit this week, and they were very well behaved. They were a perfect example of why it's good to have two or more rats of the same sex - when they weren't being examined, poked, weighed, etc, they calmly curled up in their snuggle snack with their heads sticking out, and stared curiously at the vet.
The vet let me know that Louder has absolutely gorgeous fur and bright, healthy eyes, but with a very worrying weight problem. My little girl is over 400 grams, which is huge for a female! I've been asked to help Louder lose weight. We got to the bottom of them problem when I got home - the other half has been baking special cookies for the rats, and feeding them while I'm not around. No wonder she's fat, she's gorging on cookies!
Plachowski is a more slender 330 grams, with an easily treatable respiratory infection. How easily treatable, you ask? She cannot get enough of her Baytril and Doxycycline. She grabs the syringes out of my hands and slurps it all down as fast as she can. In all of my years of rat ownership, I've never encountered a single rat that doesn't try to kill me at medication time, let alone like it. Of course, when it's time for a dose of Metacam, I have to retrieve her from under the couch or off the ceiling.
We discussed Plachowski's peculiar tail habits, and the vet was stumped. This is a rat who wags her tail like a golden retriever. The vet has heard of rats wagging their tails as a sign of irritation, aggression, frustration, but never as a sign of happiness or excitement. She wondered out loud if this could be a sign of epilepsy in Plachowski, and the tail wagging a small seizure? I've been asked to keep an eye out on the rat when she wags her tail to try to see what's going on in her eyes when it happens.
It is most certainly not a seizure. This is one happy animal, as far as I can tell. In fact, I caught her wagging her tail last night like a puppy, and all of the lights were on upstairs. Next thing I knew, a ball of black fur came flying at my face. She wags her tail before she jumps, like she's overcome with excitement at being super naughty.
So... any other tail waggers out there? Moo and Mulder used to wag their tails when you pet them in just the right spots, and sometimes Louder does that too. Mulder used to wag her tail if you tried to take away a beloved treat, and then she'd get aggressive. But happy golden retriever type wagging? Yeah, I'm stumped.
The vet let me know that Louder has absolutely gorgeous fur and bright, healthy eyes, but with a very worrying weight problem. My little girl is over 400 grams, which is huge for a female! I've been asked to help Louder lose weight. We got to the bottom of them problem when I got home - the other half has been baking special cookies for the rats, and feeding them while I'm not around. No wonder she's fat, she's gorging on cookies!
Plachowski is a more slender 330 grams, with an easily treatable respiratory infection. How easily treatable, you ask? She cannot get enough of her Baytril and Doxycycline. She grabs the syringes out of my hands and slurps it all down as fast as she can. In all of my years of rat ownership, I've never encountered a single rat that doesn't try to kill me at medication time, let alone like it. Of course, when it's time for a dose of Metacam, I have to retrieve her from under the couch or off the ceiling.
We discussed Plachowski's peculiar tail habits, and the vet was stumped. This is a rat who wags her tail like a golden retriever. The vet has heard of rats wagging their tails as a sign of irritation, aggression, frustration, but never as a sign of happiness or excitement. She wondered out loud if this could be a sign of epilepsy in Plachowski, and the tail wagging a small seizure? I've been asked to keep an eye out on the rat when she wags her tail to try to see what's going on in her eyes when it happens.
It is most certainly not a seizure. This is one happy animal, as far as I can tell. In fact, I caught her wagging her tail last night like a puppy, and all of the lights were on upstairs. Next thing I knew, a ball of black fur came flying at my face. She wags her tail before she jumps, like she's overcome with excitement at being super naughty.
So... any other tail waggers out there? Moo and Mulder used to wag their tails when you pet them in just the right spots, and sometimes Louder does that too. Mulder used to wag her tail if you tried to take away a beloved treat, and then she'd get aggressive. But happy golden retriever type wagging? Yeah, I'm stumped.