Rat Invasion

I have launched head-first into a rat-stuff-buying mission. I have now purchased a cage (Trevor's vote was for the one that's the same as ST, Lily, and Jadis'), a very secure carrier, a little house thingie, a cuddle cup, a chube (a tube made of press vegetables), a wheel, five packages of treats, a toy that you can hide treats in, two huge air-tight buckets for storing food (which we'll make ourselves from human-grade ingredients and dogfood), a litter tray, a ceramic food dish, and a chew chain.

I still need to buy a stand for the cage (because I really don't want it to be on the floor and I want something with shelves to put all their stuff on), two custom-made hammocks and two pocket hammocks, a huge pack of zip ties, chicken wire to make sure the rats don't squeeze through the bars of their cage (which is made for ferrets) when they're babies, litter or bedding for the litter tray (I want to check what kind the breeder uses before I buy any), and possibly a water bottle depending on if we have an extra around here.

I already bought the dog food but once we know the pick-up date for the babies I'll have to buy all of the ingredients for the other food. Lastly, I'll need to pay for both of the girls to be spayed.

In addition to our two baby girls, who will probably come from the amazing SITH Rattery in Canada in late February or early March, Trevor and I will probably be taking in a rescue baby girl from one of Trevor's friends. The rat belonged to her roomate, and her cagemate died and the girl doesn't have time to take care of her, so she's all alone and she's only six months old. Her name was Lily but since we already have a Lily, we've decided to rename her Trinity Ann Awesomesauce. "Trinity" and "Awesomesauce" are in honor of Neo, because her situation and markings reminded us of Neo, and "Ann" is in tribute to my mother (her middle name was Ann before she got married), who has donated the money for us to get a checkup and a spay for her. Trinity will live in Tacoma with us so we can get her used to people (and possibly other rats) again and make sure she's happy and healthy. Once we have everything for the SITH girls' cage together and ready to go and we get the girls, we'll probably move Trinity down to Olympia to live with them. So Trevor and I will end up with three rats instead of two, but she sounds like such a sweetie and the cage is more than big enough for all three of them even when they're full grown.

We've also received confirmation from Little Mischief Rescue that we can adopt Benny (soon to be known as Goodbye Benny Awesomesauce), and Wren had already put herself on the waiting list at SITH and ROUS for a boy because she wasn't sure she could get Benny, so we'll probably end up with two new baby boys for the house. Wren has said that seven is absolutely the limit for her mischief (group of rats), but that it's probably best if she gets two boys instead of one because ST is going downhill fast now that he's three years old and we could lose him at any moment (though we're optimistic and he's still happy and healthy thus far, just losing mobility quickly).

So there's the massive rat update. I'll try to post pictures of Trinity as soon as possible after I get her tomorrow, and then once the SITH babies are born they should post pictures of them on their website (which I'll link once I know which ones we're getting) and then five weeks later we can take them home! I'm so excited I can hardly stand it! Hence all of the buying of rat things. Those little buggers are very expensive to start out with, but once you have a cage and everything the routine maintenance and even getting more rats is relatively cheap. It's worth it to have little bundles of cuteness in our lives.