Fragglerats.com

So I was getting ready for work this morning, the babies hanging at the cage door hoping for breakfast. Im weak, so of course I made them a bagel and offered each a bite. Poor ravenous little beasts LOL. They took off to their favorite corner to gobble it down.

Adrienne gets up not long after I leave and not seeing any breakfast in the cage, proceeds to make them toast, which of course they greedily accepted and gobbled. Is it any wonder that they both have become a bit pudgy and sleek? Its not just good nutrition and care, its greed and typical rat “oh boy, nummies!”.

I think we need to get a dry erase board so we know who has done what. I dont want the boys so large they waddle rather than walk LOL.

The boys are full of hilarious antics, from dragging one another up and down ramps to begging for the smallest scraps of nummies. Im not sure who will dominate the cage yet, its hard to tell with the daily back and forth between them. One minute I think it might be Fergus and then Wembley does something totally unexpected. They sure are fun to watch.

Their markings have darkened beautifully! Wembley is so very cute, his dumbo ears giving him a look of innocence, while Fergus is handsome, a slight shadow of color across his tiny muzzle. Maybe it’s the high set ears, but Fergus seems almost regal and always in control of himself no matter what the situation. They are both growing up handsome and so quickly! They have been home with us for a month already and it has flown by!!!

I have decided that Wembley needs a lesson in table manners. I thought they might enjoy a little sample of a chocolate cream pie I made earlier today. I dipped my pinky into the mixture and offered the boys a lick. Fergus, being the licky boy anyway, was very careful and polite while his brother tried to gnaw. Im going to sit Wembley down and maybe read a chapter or four from a miss manners book. He wont listen and wont take a thing from it, but at least I will have tried LOL! Next time Im passing out samples, I will do the smart thing and offer Wembley his bite on a spoon.

Well, I just sat down after doing a massive cleaning of the two large cages that I have. I had Squeaker, Odin and Butters all in the same cage and they’ve lived together for as long as I’ve owned each. But times change.

I now have two ‘new’ boys to take care of as well. They are rescues that I picked up off of Pirattery. Thanks, Kim. These boys are very sweet. Their names are Chin-Po and Mushu. Originally, I was only going to pick up Chin-Po but upon finding out that Mushu was his brother and they were kinda fond of each other, I just had to have them both. And I’m the better for it. They are both wonderful rat boys.

Anyway, back to the cleaning story. Chin-Po and Mushu are definitely calm rats for the most part. They’re still a bit shy even after 3 weeks of staying here. Up until last Thursday, I had taken a hands-off approach to them. I wanted them to get comfortable with where they were before pushing them to be more open and affectionate. And that was tough, mainly because when you watch them, they show so many signs about wanting to be affectionate. When I open the cage, they will come up and poke their heads out to see what’s up and stretch their necks out to see if I am going to pick them up.

I never rushed them. The one thing I have is patience. They need that more than I need them to show affection. So, with that said, I saw enough in them to know that it was time to give them a little push in the right direction. Chin-Po needed the most pushing because he’s very very timid. He’s not overly shy mind you, but he’s just reluctant to be affectionate without proper motivation. Mushu, on the other hand, seems to just spring out of the cage and want to look at everything. He’s still timid mind you, but very exploratory.

So, all the rats got a bath and everything they had were scrubbed. Butters and Squeaker will be put in their own cage and Odin, who is blind but very sweet, will now live with Chin-Po and Mushu. I’m hoping that by introducing them to a rat I know will allow handling that they will see how easy it is and behave similarly.

We shall see. I’m hoping this will work to their benefit. I know it’ll still be a bit rough on them having to learn to live with a new pal. The point is that rescuing rats is a rewarding thing to do. Patience and understanding how they think is a key, though.

Here’s to Chin-Po and Mushu, though.

OK… this is the first official entry of the fragglerats site. We hope everything flies well on this site but there may be problems. You can help.

First, I’d like to take the time to welcome everyone who enjoys rats or is merely curious as to what people who own rats think like, look like and act like. We’re here mainly to promote two special rats who have a lot of friends, both animal and human. And hey, we thought the site name was spiffy too. =)

If you’d like to help us improve the site, we would absolutely love to hear from you. Right now, the best way to help is to report any bad links or broken images on the site. You can send me an e-mail and I’ll fix them as quickly as I can.

Another way to help improve the site is to report any pages that look funny. I have many computers and different operating systems but I don’t have nearly all of them that are out there. If I did, I’d own 50+ computers that are all different in some way. For instance, I don’t own an Apple computer so therefore I can’t test what the site looks like on Safari or any other web browser for an Apple computer. I do have some UNIX systems so I have that covered for the most part.

Currently, the site doesn’t look very good in Opera and I haven’t tested what Mozilla renders the site like. If you have Mozilla and the site looks pretty bad, drop me a line.

We aren’t officially live yet so as of this posting (Aug. 10, 2006), a permission is required for all reader comments to this site. We are testing this system as I’ve never used it before. One of the options is to allow readers who we know the option of immediate posting of their comments. Obviously we can’t know if you’re posting instantly the first time you post so we would have to set that up on your second comment.

Even then, I have some security concerns with this option. We may ultimately drop all of this “permissions” stuff and allow anyone the access to just post what you want without having to be “screened” so to speak.

Bear with us as we make determinations on how this is all to be implemented.

If you have any questions, you can e-mail me at scott@fragglerats.com