| | A got a new rat 2 weeks ago. His previous one, Cody, died a few months ago, causing many tears and much grief. He chose a new one with the same coloring, against my advice. I keep reminding him that just because she looks like Cody doesn't mean she'll act like Cody. He named the new girl Peachy.  insisted "No Recycling of Names." Whew. We kept her in a separate cage for quarantine until today. We were pretty careful about handwashing for the first week, but I know the boys were getting less and less vigilant. We had their cages about a foot apart the first week, and closer to 5 inches apart the second week. I wanted them to hear and smell each other (I just hoped nobody would sneeze directly on the other cage  ) so that it wouldn't be a huge shock when they all moved in together. So when it came time to clean cages today, we put the older rats into the cage Peachy was in all week. Socks immediately did the whole "I'm the boss" thing with flipping her over onto her back, and Peachy squeaked a "yeah, I got it." I was hoping that would be the worst of it. Nooo. Socks was apparently pretty stressed out by this whole 'new roomie' idea. She kept flipping Peachy over and holding her down until she squealed. I forced myself to stay out of it until I saw her get a really good hold on Peachy's side as Peachy ran Up The Wall (!!) to get away. At this point, I pulled Socks out and put her into a cardboard carrier we still had from bringing Peachy home. Perdita and peachy sniffed each other's noses, Perdy sorta climbed on top and mooshed Peachy for a moment, then Peachy licked Perdita's nose like a kiss. (She has -the-softest-tongue!) Then they each went their separate ways and all was well! We finished cleaning the big cage and the floor and put the Big New Cage into place in its new home. We bought the new cage at the same time as the new rat ... there was another family looking at small animals and the dad said to his daughter "see, you need a biiig cage for a rat, we want something smaller." I laughed and said we actually had two more at home, so this would be a nice roomy 3-rat cage. She ended up with the cutest black bear hamster.
What? Me, off on a tangent?
We put all 3 rats into the new cage, and pretty soon Socks was following Peachy around and being a bully. Again, I made myself ignore it for the most part while we cleaned the littler cage in preparation for it to go into storage. At one point, I did pull Socks out, flip her over on her back, and said "No, _I_ am the boss" and held her there until she gave in with a kind of sigh. This seemed to work for, oh, all of 3 minutes. Other than those 2 interventions, I kept my nose out of it. After it had mostly quieted down, A went to look again, "OH NO! PEACHY'S BLEEEEEEDING!" Crap. I went to look at her, and she had a little smear of blood on her 'wrist.' It didn't look like an actual wound, so I looked her over to see where the blood was from. Nothing obvious. Hrm. Then we noticed a huge smear of blood on Socks' hip/knee area. So I pulled her out of the cage. She has torn off one of her toenails. Her right pinky toe. Ouch. I took her into the bathroom and washed the blood off her hip as well as I could, but mostly left the foot alone, figuring she wouldn't appreciate me messing with it too much. Our rats aren't used to baths anyway. We scrub the cage weekly, but we let them do their own version of bathing. Several minutes later, "Now Perdy's bloody!" I assured him that I was 99% positive it was Socks' blood, but I pulled her out and washed her off. She was even less excited by this, but put up with it grudgingly. I sorta rinsed the wet blood off, but left some dried blood in her fur. I didn't want to annoy her too much! I glanced at Socks' foot. It's covered in blood. Yuck. One good thing about all of this; apparently hurting herself has taken all the fight out of her. Since she's leaving bloody footprints everywhere, including her roommates, I finally decided to see what I could look up about Rat First Aid. Apparently rat extremities just bleed a lot. There were recommendations for how to stem the bleeding, and also the go-ahead for giving acetaminophen and using a topical antibiotic like Neosporin. I poured several drops of children's Tylenol into a baby spoon and offered it to her. She lapped it up like candy (it did smell good.) I decided to leave off on the Neosporin, since she was all cozy in the 'clubhouse' and I didn't want to pick her up -again- if she had found a comfy spot. A little bit ago I went to look again. Her foot looks nasty, covered in dried blood, but Peachy is all snuggled up to her! I wonder if Socks thinks Peachy got the better of her, and Peachy's just glad that Socks settled the heck down. peeked in on them a little later than that, and all 3 of them were in the clubhouse. Awwwww. I hope this is it, rather than just a naptime truce.
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| | Posted 5/19/2007 3:55 PM - 20 views - 0 comments
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