Pet Forum / Mammals / Rats / July 2007

I've just had the most terrible fright -- I was too tired to pay the
rats any proper attention yesterday, and when I came in this evening, I
discovered the top of the cage open (either it had been ajar for two
days, or the rats, like their predecessors, had discovered how to push
it up) and Natalie gone. As well as being my favourite, she is also an
agouti, which means of course that she looks *exactly* like a 'wild rat'
to anyone else...

Normally she can always climb back into the cage by herself when I let
them out, and if she'd been out for a day or more she would surely have
been hungry and especially thirsty enough to want to go back in -- I
called and called in a panic and got a horribly empty-sounding lack of
response. Then I noticed that the black bag of soiled rat litter (where
they like to curl up when out of the cage -- messy creatures!) had been
cleared from the room, presumably to its final destination... the
compost heap where the foxes roam...

Having been assured that the whole thing had been sorted through very
carefully a handful at a time, and that there couldn't *possibly* have
been a rat asleep in it, even a little brown one, I became obsessed by
the idea that she must somehow have slipped out of the room during the
day. The door is supposed to be kept shut at all times (mainly to keep
the cats out), but when the rats are in the cage I often catch people
leaving it a little ajar for convenience; enough for a cat to hook a paw
around, or in this case for an exploring rat to slip out. With two
dedicated rodent-hunting felines in the same building (there's an old
rat-hole by the kitchen that we strongly suspect is being reinhabited,
judging by the amount of interest the cats have been showing in it
recently, and this very morning a dead mouse turned up in the boiler,
having presumably been chased in there and found itself unable to
escape) she had very little chance of surviving for long out there :-(

I checked under every piece of furniture, in all the empty drawers,in
all the boxes and bags I'd ever known the rats climb into. She didn't
come out to the sound of the rat-food being poured from the bag, or even
to see what all the peculiar dragging noises were about. She didn't come
out when I crumpled the yoghurt-drops bag. She didn't come out when I
called and called her name.

Then, just as I'd dragged in an old bedspread in the vain hope of
sleeping in here in case I might hear her moving at night, or in case
she might feel cold and seek to come into bed with me, I thought I heard
a wood-gnawing noise from the other end of the room. I called. Nothing,
save for Annabel clattering around with the fresh food in the cage. Then
again I thought I heard a sound from the desk drawers I'd already
checked.

I pulled out the empty bottom one -- nothing. I pulled out the one with
the paper in it -- a couple of maize kernels lying on top, but those
were probably from Annabel's foray into that same drawer two days
earlier. There was practically no spare room in the top drawer at all,
being entirely filled with cassette tapes standing on end, but I pulled
it out a crack... and saw a long brown tail. Oh joy! Oh rapture! I
pulled the drawer out further, desperate not to crush her back, and
found a very flattened Natalie creeping further into the drawer and not
at all eager to be rescued. How she'd got in there I can't imagine --
whether she was really stuck, I don't know. I was too overjoyed that my
neglect hadn't proved fatal to worry about it.

I caught her up against my cheek and carried her back to the cage, where
she made a bee-line for the food (but not, oddly, the water-bottle --
she still hasn't had anything to drink that I've noticed, so she can't
have been out for that long). She was eager enough for yoghurt-drops
once she'd been prised out of her hideaway, and I broke my usual rule by
giving them more than one each, and Natalie more and bigger ones than
Annabel, murmuring sweet-talk to her all the time :-)

Now Annabel is busy bed-making, transferring the entire stock of
shredded newspaper from the bottom of the cage to the top, while Natalie
is inside the cardboard box; I don't think she's taken any harm from her
prolonged excursion, but it's too early to be sure. She's eager enough
to be fed little bits of rat-food by hand, Annabel having emptied the
whole bowl and hidden it in her new bed! Presumably the rats can find
one another's stashes eventually...