New cage (also, comics for sale, scroll to the bottom of the post)
Got a new cage for Fimmeon yesterday, it's a bird cage. It's much bigger than the aquarium we were using, which really wasn't big enough. We got it (the cage that is) in the crazy asian store near our house, and by crazy, I mean the store is pretty big, got about 8 isles of floor to ceiling shelves, every shelf is packed full of all sorts of weird stuff and there's stuff spilling over the floor, they even have a huge display outside of the weirdest things... toilet paper, scarves, immitation crocs, gardening parephanalia...
Anyway, our cage was on the top shelf at the back of the store, we had to get one of the nice asians who work there to climb up the shelf and drop it down to us so we could look at it. It's a good size for two rats, with platforms it could be good for four. It had a wire floor, but that just lifted out, and there was a removable drawer in the base for easy cleaning (I left that in though). The top wire part of the cage can be removed from the base too, if necessary. It came with two little feeder boxes fitted to the doors too. It's white, all white. Shaped sort of like a rectangular house with a T shaped roof.
We bought the thing (good and cheap too, the same cage in a pet store would probably have been $60+ and we got ours for $35) and carried it home. Pretty heavy - I wouldn't want to have to escape zombies whilst carrying the thing.
I gave it a good wash, it didn't look dirty, but the ammount of filth that came off made me think it had been on that shelf for 20+ years. I put in some clean litter, made Fimmeon a new house to sleep in out of a tissue box, then, for laughs, I put the little feeder boxes in with food and water. They were pretty high up from the floor so I wasn't sure that Fimmeon would get to them.
Then I added Fimmeon. He seemed scared at first, darting into the cardboard tube we had transferred from his old cage. He stayed there until I moved the cage up to where we had the aquarium. I think the cat (who was determined to get a good look) probably spooked him, even though I was trying to keep him away. Anyway, once back up on a benchtop he came out of hiding and sniffed around, then tried testing every single space between the bars to see if he could fit through. Then he re-tested. Then he discovered the food box and after a few minutes figuring out how to get in, he decided he'd make a little stash in his house.
I'm planning to put some levels in it for him to climb around on, but for now it's just the cage, I'll need to get a dripper bottle that fits between the bars too, a water dish isn't really ideal. And I still need to get him some company... and soon! At least now we have something to keep the second rat in until the two are aquainted.
Also, I'm noticing a lot of hostility towards rats. Stupidly large ammounts of hostility. I went excitedly to work ant told everyone about my new pet. A coworker of mine claims that talking about rats makes her feel sick. And the owner of the store exclaimed "what? you let your rat out of it's cage?". I was half expecting to be told that I wasn't allowed to handle food anymore (despite the stringent hand-cleaning procedures and the mandatory gloves). Friends have said stupid things about feeding my rat to their snakes, other freinds have shown disgust at how filthy rats are (even though they previously owned mice, which are dirtier and smellier...), and some have claimed they won't be visiting our house anymore for fear of disease.
Why is the fear of rats so deeply instilled in the human psyche? I thought we were all taught in school that the black death was transmitted via human-fleas (or was it the human louse? I don't think it matters really), spread by a wide variety of animals, not just rats. Especially transmitted by humans, actually. Perhaps it's the mouse plagues that scare people silly - billions of mice covering entire fields, making runways and traintracks dangerously slippery, so many that cats gorged themselves to 16 kilos and gave up. So many that poisoning and trapping was impractical, and all that really could be done was wait it out. Nobody I know has even so much heard of a mouse plague however. Not even the really old people.
I ask people why and all they can come up with is 'they live in sewers'.
Really now, what sewers? We don't have the kind of sewers here that rats can live in... unless they can breathe underwater. Our wild rats live around shopping centres and train stations. Anywhere there's an exterior bin that might contain food. Sometimes houses too. We have some rats in the walls at the moment. We have shared roofspace, so they might be coming through from someone else's house, but the entire roofspace has been cleared and preventative measures taken several times, then a month later and I hear rats fighting in the wall whilst I'm making breakfast. Or one time, a possum, only it got caught in a heating vent and died with it's paws hanging out.
Anyway, point being, people have no real reasons, the rat is just the bad guy because it *used* to be blamed for the black death, and because in some far-away places they live in sewers, that means all local pet rats are also filthy. I've seen some pretty gross looking pidgeons in my time, but does anyone claim to feel sick when talking about them? No, people associate pidgeons with old people and parks. And also, secret messages. But not mange, and fleas, and whatever crazy skin conditions they have.
And one final issue to bring out - we have some comics for sale, a lot of 2000+. Someone who was interested in buying them all offered us $400.
$400.
I laughed at him.
WTF does he take me for? Yeah, I'll sell you all my comics for less than 20c each. Suuuuuure. Fuck, I could sell them for $1 each and that'd still be a bargain!
If anyone's interested in buying 2000+ comics, and isn't going to make a stupid STUPID offer like $400 for them all then gimme your email addy and I'll send you the almost complete inventory (missing about 50, they weren't particularly spectacular so I, the lazy sod that I am, didn't bother to include them).
Anyway, our cage was on the top shelf at the back of the store, we had to get one of the nice asians who work there to climb up the shelf and drop it down to us so we could look at it. It's a good size for two rats, with platforms it could be good for four. It had a wire floor, but that just lifted out, and there was a removable drawer in the base for easy cleaning (I left that in though). The top wire part of the cage can be removed from the base too, if necessary. It came with two little feeder boxes fitted to the doors too. It's white, all white. Shaped sort of like a rectangular house with a T shaped roof.
We bought the thing (good and cheap too, the same cage in a pet store would probably have been $60+ and we got ours for $35) and carried it home. Pretty heavy - I wouldn't want to have to escape zombies whilst carrying the thing.
I gave it a good wash, it didn't look dirty, but the ammount of filth that came off made me think it had been on that shelf for 20+ years. I put in some clean litter, made Fimmeon a new house to sleep in out of a tissue box, then, for laughs, I put the little feeder boxes in with food and water. They were pretty high up from the floor so I wasn't sure that Fimmeon would get to them.
Then I added Fimmeon. He seemed scared at first, darting into the cardboard tube we had transferred from his old cage. He stayed there until I moved the cage up to where we had the aquarium. I think the cat (who was determined to get a good look) probably spooked him, even though I was trying to keep him away. Anyway, once back up on a benchtop he came out of hiding and sniffed around, then tried testing every single space between the bars to see if he could fit through. Then he re-tested. Then he discovered the food box and after a few minutes figuring out how to get in, he decided he'd make a little stash in his house.
I'm planning to put some levels in it for him to climb around on, but for now it's just the cage, I'll need to get a dripper bottle that fits between the bars too, a water dish isn't really ideal. And I still need to get him some company... and soon! At least now we have something to keep the second rat in until the two are aquainted.
Also, I'm noticing a lot of hostility towards rats. Stupidly large ammounts of hostility. I went excitedly to work ant told everyone about my new pet. A coworker of mine claims that talking about rats makes her feel sick. And the owner of the store exclaimed "what? you let your rat out of it's cage?". I was half expecting to be told that I wasn't allowed to handle food anymore (despite the stringent hand-cleaning procedures and the mandatory gloves). Friends have said stupid things about feeding my rat to their snakes, other freinds have shown disgust at how filthy rats are (even though they previously owned mice, which are dirtier and smellier...), and some have claimed they won't be visiting our house anymore for fear of disease.
Why is the fear of rats so deeply instilled in the human psyche? I thought we were all taught in school that the black death was transmitted via human-fleas (or was it the human louse? I don't think it matters really), spread by a wide variety of animals, not just rats. Especially transmitted by humans, actually. Perhaps it's the mouse plagues that scare people silly - billions of mice covering entire fields, making runways and traintracks dangerously slippery, so many that cats gorged themselves to 16 kilos and gave up. So many that poisoning and trapping was impractical, and all that really could be done was wait it out. Nobody I know has even so much heard of a mouse plague however. Not even the really old people.
I ask people why and all they can come up with is 'they live in sewers'.
Really now, what sewers? We don't have the kind of sewers here that rats can live in... unless they can breathe underwater. Our wild rats live around shopping centres and train stations. Anywhere there's an exterior bin that might contain food. Sometimes houses too. We have some rats in the walls at the moment. We have shared roofspace, so they might be coming through from someone else's house, but the entire roofspace has been cleared and preventative measures taken several times, then a month later and I hear rats fighting in the wall whilst I'm making breakfast. Or one time, a possum, only it got caught in a heating vent and died with it's paws hanging out.
Anyway, point being, people have no real reasons, the rat is just the bad guy because it *used* to be blamed for the black death, and because in some far-away places they live in sewers, that means all local pet rats are also filthy. I've seen some pretty gross looking pidgeons in my time, but does anyone claim to feel sick when talking about them? No, people associate pidgeons with old people and parks. And also, secret messages. But not mange, and fleas, and whatever crazy skin conditions they have.
And one final issue to bring out - we have some comics for sale, a lot of 2000+. Someone who was interested in buying them all offered us $400.
$400.
I laughed at him.
WTF does he take me for? Yeah, I'll sell you all my comics for less than 20c each. Suuuuuure. Fuck, I could sell them for $1 each and that'd still be a bargain!
If anyone's interested in buying 2000+ comics, and isn't going to make a stupid STUPID offer like $400 for them all then gimme your email addy and I'll send you the almost complete inventory (missing about 50, they weren't particularly spectacular so I, the lazy sod that I am, didn't bother to include them).