Pet Rat Blog

Today is a very sad day for us since our little buddy passed away today.

He had some problems a couple months ago so we took him to the vet and the vet said he had a mild case of Bronchitis and gave Jerry some Baytril and Doxycycline liquid to take 2 times a day until gone which helped.

Last night when I gave them their late night snack they all three were fine since all three ran to the gate to get some Organic Romaine Lettuce and early this morning when Jennifer feed them they all came and got their banana chip.

I went in to feed our little buddies this afternoon and noticed Jerry was just laying in the hammock and not coming to the gate so I thought he was just tired so I grabbed the bag of banana chips and shook the bag which would make all 3 of our little buddies come running to the gate to get their banana but this time Jerry never wanted to come.

I reached in and picked him up from his hammock and noticed he had a hard time breathing and I could see every breath he would take as his body would expand and contract and I knew something was very wrong.

My wife Jennifer had Jerry on her tummy and we could see our little buddy was having a harder time breathing since he was now opening his mouth with each breath. Kayliauna got Myles and Amadeus out of the cage and brought them to Jerry and they seemed to know something was wrong with Jerry since they both started grooming him and Myles even laid his body on Jerry as if he wanted to comfort Jerry.

Jennifer opened his mouth to see if anything was stuck in his throat and could not see anything and she even got a syringe filled with water and gave that to him and it went down without any problem so nothing was lodged in his throat.

Jerry would walk around a little then just lay down and after a few minutes or so Jerry was not wanting to move at all and his breathing got really bad and I just felt he was going to pass away and there was nothing we could do and I have never felt so helpless.

I decided to take Jerry and put him back in his cage so he could be with his two brothers since I felt he was going to die and I stroked his little head and was telling him how much we all Loved him and when I opened up the cage I put him in the hammock and he rolled over on his side so I got him back out and I could see he was not breathing so I yelled for Jennifer.

Jennifer and our daughter Kayliauan came running and I told them Jerry had passed away. We all three started crying our eyes out. It was very emotional for sure.

I never thought we would be able to Love Rats as much as we do and just how much a Rat could become part of the family but we all Love our Rats so very much and we all stood there balling our eyes out knowing Jerry was gone.

We ended up taking Jerry to a small park that has lots of wooded area and baried our little fatty ratty.

The below images show Jerry's Grave and Jerry shortly after passing. Not sure why I took that picture after he passed away but I guess it was part of my grieving process. You can click the images for larger view.

I think Jerry had something wrong with him other than a mild case of Bronchitis since Jerry was a Fatty Ratty and his 2 brothers are very slim and not fat at all but we all fell in Love with him and he will be missed so very much.... We love you buddy! Rest in Peace little buddy!

Jerry was a fatty ratty but we never fed him anything differently since we always put the food in their bowl and usually Jerry would grab and run to the top floor to eat so when he was eating he was getting more exercise than his two brothers since they usually stayed right next to their food bowl when eating or at least remain on the same floor as their food bowl but Jerry ended up being a fatty ratty.

Myles and Amadeus are fine but they do know their brother is not longer with them and they seemed sad like they knew Jerry had died.

We knew our Ratties would not live a long time but we thought for sure it would be more than 265 days but we are Blessed to have had the time we did with Jerry and he brought so much happiness to our lives and we will always have those memories.

He was born on November 19, 2009 and passed away August 11, 2010

WE LOVE YOU JERRY... WE WILL MISS YOU VERY MUCH EACH AND EVERY DAY... REST WELL MY LITTLE FATTY RATTY... YOU GAVE US SO MUCH HAPPINESS AND JOY AND YOU WILL ALWAYS BE PART OF OUR FAMILY AND WE WILL MISS YOU DEARLY.

We just got a Kitten and named him Ryolu - (rye-oh-olu).

I know, some people may wonder why on earth we would get a kitten since we have 3 rats but after a lot of research we figured it would be ok but I now see its going to be a long time before our rats will like our kitten.

We had the rats in their cage and our cat came up to the cage and was just curious as to what was moving inside. The kitten never touched the rats but our little boys got so scared of the cat they pretty much froze in time.

Myles would not move at all for a few minutes. He just stood there looking into space even after the kitten moved away.

Amadeus ran to their little house in the cage and would not eat for 3 hours. Even when we tried to give him his favorite snack, banana chips. He just stared into space like Myles did and it was a very scary thing to watch.

Amadeus is the Alpha Rat and the most gentle one of them all. He would always be the first one to come to the door of the cage when we sat down but no matter what we tried he stayed in the house. He would not eat, drink or anything. He just sat there in his cage looking like he was very very scared.

Jerry never got bothered one way or the other. He just walked around as he always does even when the cat was right up to the cage. Jerry just looked and walked around and it never bothered him at all but Myles and Amadeus was pretty much scared to death... almost anyways and it really scared us as well.

We stayed up with them until 4am and had Amadeus out of the cage (kitten was locked down in the bathroom) the longest and finally after 4 hours he started coming around.

I got a wash cloth and rubbed all over the kitten and then put that wash cloth next to the rat thinking the smell is what could have caused this to happen but it never bothered him at all, even when I put the wash cloth over top of Amadeus it never seemed to bother him.

I even made some kitten sounds to see if that got them scared and that never bothered them so I guess it all comes down to sight.

I would have never thought something like this would have happened. I mean the kitten never touched them and never even put his paws on the cage. He did get nose to nose with Myles and at first Myles seemed like he liked the cat but then he just froze.

This morning they are fine except Amadeus now takes his food into the house to eat and I dont ever remember him doing that. Jerry is the one would always grabbed his food and ran into the house to eat it and then come back for more.

We made a cover to put over the cage and will cover them up when the kitten is out playing and the rats are sleeping and when we put the kitten in his room we will uncover the rats and see how they do.

I sure hope our little ratties are fine. I read online that rats can get scared to death and we would feel so bad if that happened to our little buddies.

We want to keep the kitten but our little buddies come first.

If we have to give up our kitten its going to break our daughters little heart since she is pretty attached to the kitten so you can see the delima we are in but we cannot let our little rats go since we had them first and our daughters loves the rats.

I thought I would doing the right thing by adopting the kitten which we have already invested over $400.00 in the kitten. We took him to the Vet and got him shots and stuff and going to take him back in 3 weeks to get him spayed which will be clost to $100.00 and we still want to get him a Cat Condo so we are out some pretty good money on our kitten but I have to admit the Rats come first.

I really do not know what to do. We have other friends that have both cats and rats and they keep telling us everything will be just fine and how its going to take time to get the rats so they are not scared of the cat but we are so afraid they will "literally be scared to death."

I will make other post about this matter in the near future. Lets Pray for the best!

Our Little Buddy Jerry has been making these strange sounds. We thought it was fine sine it sounded like he was just happy but Myles and Amadeus was not making those type of sounds so we decided to take Jerry to the Vet.

The good news is his lungs are fine but him wind pipe is smaller than it should be and the Vet said Jerry had a minor case of bronchitis and wanted to take an x-ray to make sure his lungs were ok.

We saw little white areas with black dots in the center which is not supposed to be that way and the Vet gave him 2 types of liquid medication.

One is Baytril and the other one is Doxycycline and we need to give him .06 milligrams every 12 hours and they are both flavored with grape so hopefully Jerry likes the taste. I know Myles and Amadeus will lick his Jerry's face after we put Jerry back into their cage so the taste must be pretty good.

So far the results seem to be good since Jerry does not breath as fast and the noise has pretty much gone away but we do at time still hear a little squeak when we hold him to our ear but its getting much better.

That visit cost us almost $300.00 so anyone who wants to get a Rat for a Pet please understand Rats need to be taken to the Vet from time to time and if you cannot afford the Vet fees then please do not get a rat.

Jerry was a little angle while he was being examined at the Vet.

We just put up our 5th Gallery. I hope you enjoy it.

Gallery 5

If you click on the thumb images it will open the larger image which are pretty large.

Our little buddies are in their cage eating some organic lettuce. This time they all three stayed around the bowl of lettuce while eating. Usually Jerry grabs food from the bowl and runs away. I guess he is a little shy but

Amadeus will always stay right with the food. I guess he is too lazy to move away or knows he can get more by staying at the blow.

Myles will stay at the bowl but sometimes he does grab and run.

We also have some images of them playing in their play pen. The pen is 29" high but we had to cut some pieces of plastic and drap over the top of all sides because they can climb out of the pen even with the wire pen having verticle wire.

We pretty much stopped using the wire play pen because it takes to long to setup. Now we put a water proof pad on the carpet and put up the wire play pen in the door way and just let them play around in our walk in closet and they love it.

You will see its pretty large so they have plenty of room to roam around and we put different things on the floor so they have plenty of things to play with. We also put in the Flex Drain Pipe after i twist it and hook the end pieces together so they can climb around which they love to do. We first started putting the Drain Pipe in the pen without hooking the ends together but after a while they just get in the Pipe and go to sleep so we put a stop to that so they can get some exercise which they need each day.

We hope you enjoy our little friends and if you ever have any questions please contact us.

Been behind on getting our latest gallery up on the site but I finally got it.

Gallery 4

We will be adding more in the near future.

I have to say having Rats as Pets is a great idea. They are so fun to watch and interact with and I never really knew how smart a Rat was until we got our 3 little ones.

We allowed them to get into the bath tub and sorry to say they were very scared of the water but hopefully they will get use to it as I have read online how much Rats love the water but then again one should not believe everything they read online.