Posted by RabbitEducator on April 19, 2003 at 18:21:29:
In Reply to: Re: Thinking of Adoption posted by Ravyn11 on April 19, 2003 at 10:22:33:
Ahh.. rats and rabbits.. The smell isn't what I'm worried about - neither of my rabbits at the time were affected by the newcomer's smell. I would suggest you don't put the cage on the floor since rats can be very territorial about their cage and their stuff (they go through a VERY territorial time between 4-6 months of age).
One time I was cleaning the rat cage and Ferret, my rat, was sitting on my knee while I was taking things out of his cage. Well, BunBun wanted to investigate and came over to sniff him. Ferret obviously took this as a threat and grabbed her nose for a quick second - she bled like something else! Another thing I found almost amusing was when she'd walk by his cage, Ferret would slam his little feetsies against the cage door as hard as he could to "scare" BunBun.
About the rat you're looking at - maybe you should leave him unaltered and just keep him? Sometimes rats are just single creatures and even if you alter them, they won't take to bonding to another rat. Though, I have heard neutering helps in many cases so its up to you ;)
That's good that your rabbit vet also sees rats! It seems like if they're really into rabbits (when it comes to vets) they'll also be very knowledgeable about other small mammals.
Since it seems like you've done a lot of research, I'll offer just a couple of sites - plus the fact that I had to reformat my hard drive and all my Favorites have been lost (including all the rattie info pages I had saved).
- www.dapper.com.au ~ this site is excellent when it comes to creative toys and has a big links page to other good rat sites. Also, I would highly suggest checking out "The Grotto" webpages to look at all the different types of great cages you can make for a rat.
- www.rmca.org/ ~ Rat & Mouse Club of America
And then also..
