aprilstarchild | Ratties!

So! Wednesday night I call Jarrod when I get off work and ask him if he wants to go to the Humane Society that night, and he says sure. But by the time I get home, it's started snowing. By the time we get on the freeway, it's snowing/hailing really hard, and traffic is going about three miles an hour. The adoption office closes at six thirty, we get there at six thirty-eight. No luck. They won't even open the cages, we just look at the month-old babies that came up for adoption last week, through the glass.

Thursday Jarrod has classes now, and I knew he'd be less tired than he would be after work, plus the adoption office closes later. I didn't call him though, I figured I'd wait until I got home.

What I didn't know is that due to the freezing weather, Jarrod got out of school early, and he was already on that side of town...

So when I got home, and went into our room, there was Jarrod, with his file box emptied of files, and four little girl rats in it. I don't think I stopped grinning for an hour.

The cage we got at Petco is a bit on the small side, but the rats are still pretty small themselves. I'm planning on buying a larger one in the near future, along with a playpen--a fence of sorts that can be put on the floor, so you can put them down on the floor without worrying about them running off.

My original idea was to name them Fred, George, Merry, and Pippin (yes, even though they're girl rats). It's hard to tell them apart, because they're coloring pattern is so similar (dark gray heads, white bodies with dark gray spots). One of them has this vaguely "f" looking spot, so she became Fred. But I kept mixing myself up and calling her Frodo. That, and we have a cat named George in the house. So, they all have hobbit names instead. Makes more sense anyway. And the biggest of them became Sam. The smallest one is Pippin. The shyest one became Merry by default.

They love to run around. They like getting into shirt sleeves but aren't so fond of coming out. They love the apricot-mango soy yogurt I bought and will lick it off our fingers. Some of them liked dried apple rings. They don't run on the wheel in the cage yet (it's one of those solid ones that won't catch their tails), but they seem to enjoy hiding under it. Rats love hammocks, so I cut part of the leg off an old pair of jeans and looped it over the top part of the cage that opens, and when we woke up this morning, three of them were piled into it and asleep--the other one (I think Merry) was still hiding under the wheel.

Lucy the cat likes to look at them sometimes, but has figured out that when they're in the cage, she can't get to them. Her paws are too big to fit through the wires, and the cage itself latches down to the tray. She mostly ignores them now. We still plan to carefully supervise them if they're out and about at the same time, and we still make sure Lucy's out of the room and the door's latched, when we leave the house.

OMG! So freaking cute. It's ridonkulous, as they say on Cute Overload. Especially when they clean themselves. Or yawn. Or a little face pokes out of where one's burrowing in their bedding.

So, yeah, color me a happy camper. I'm sure pictures will be up soon. Possibly video as well. Damn, I have a ridiculously high voice when I do baby-talk.

Going to Holocene tonight. DJ Anjali and the Incredible Kid, plus a guest DJ from Brazil. Sweeeet.