The Rat Lady's Rescue Rats

I’ve read before that rats need friends to stay happy otherwise they can become depressed. However, when I adopted a single male rat (My Sir Francis) from a shelter, they mentioned that he should be an only child. After a couple of days, I realized that I didn’t want to rob him of having the happiest life ever, so I did a lot of research on safe introduction methods and started looking for some younger rats.

I found a group of 3 young rats listed as albino on Kijiji and they looked adorable. I have a soft spot for albinos since Sir Francis is an albino so I had to get them asap. The girl who had them wanted to get them to a good home quickly so in a matter of hours I was bringing 3 new adorable rats home in a carrier.

While they weren’t actually albino, 2 out of the 3 have friendly and gentle temperaments and they look like 3 variations of vanilla ice cream scoops. :P I put them in another cage for quarantine then the waiting game began.

Intros didn’t go so well. The first one, Cream, that I introduced to Sir Francis in the bath tub screamed when he went to pin him down. This freaked Sir Francis out and the other two were a little more investigative, but Sir Francis wasn’t having it anymore – he screamed back at them when they’d try to approach after, so I separated them after 10 minutes.

The benefit of having two cages is that if intros don’t go so well, or if someone needs to be separated due to medical reasons or aggression, you can easily do so. Sir Francis is my first rat with an unknown history and I strive to make his living space as peaceful as possible, so I decided to wait before trying intros again.

With the 3 boys already bonded from their first home and growing quickly, the idea hit me that Sir Francis might accept baby rats easier than adolescents.

I know a lot of people will try intros several times and I get that if you’re short on space or if you think that a sensitive rat might come around, but I didn’t want to stress out my older rescue too much, so I made my choice to get 2 baby rats and keep the 3 boys separate in their own cage.

These two new baby rats became quite a plot twist in my rat owner journey. They were meant to be two younger boys that Sir Francis could accept under his wing since they’re less threatening than a trio of nearly grown males but this turned into a much more intense story,

This story is to be continued …