Pet Forum / Mammals / Rats / November 2007

Doesn't really happen too much with females, although if you were a bit OCD
about urine it'd probably happen more often than you'd like. They only seem
to wee when they need to, mostly, so it'd be after they've been out of the
cage a while, whereas with males it's a constant dribble dribble.

When they're on heat they behave a little differently.

I'd wear old clothes, myself, until I became familiar with the rats and
knew their personalities and weeing habits a bit better.

Rosemary

When i had female rats, they never peed on me, that i noticed, Rusty
litter trained her self, and when she was out running around my
bedroom, she'd scrabble up the back of the dressing table her cage was
on top of, and go back to her house for the toilet... both for a pee
or a poo, i never trained her to do that, she just wanted to be clean
i guess.... now as for making nests in my boxer shorts (in the top
drawer of the dresser) that's another story :)

we've had 3 male rats now, Branden used to pee on us a fair bit, but
it was just marking, which he was doing to say we were his property,
Nugget has never marked any of us, he has pee'd whilst out, but he'll
climb off us and go in the corner... we spot the signs now and put him
in his litter tray.

Lionheart we've only had 2 days, our first rat from a breeder, he has
marked us very slightly, but at the moment when he wants to pee, he
pee's, he's done whilst being held, luckily facing away from us but he
did a good impression of that dutch peeing fountian.

We're still litter training both our boys, not had lionheart long
enough to make any progress, but nugget is comming on well.

I wouldent say it interfeers with handeling of them at all, when they
gotta go they gotta go, just like us, you'll soon learn the signs and
be able to react, when branden wanted a poo, he'd do a little circular
dance, we then had 5 seconds to get him to his cage before he went,
Nugget does that occasionaly (he only lived with branden 3 weeks
before branden died, otherwise i'm sure he'd have picked the dance up
properly) lionheart just goes where he wants, but we'll soon learn his
warning signs and litter train him too.