I realize that title is odd, but we adopted a new rat and he doesn’t have a name yet. I’ve been contemplating calling him Burt Macklin just because that would be hilarious, but I kind of want to stick to a name starting with M if possible since I already have Marshmallow and Milo.
I found this little guy on Craiglist from a woman whose rat got pregnant unexpectedly. We had actually started emailing back and forth a week and a half ago but she stopped responding. When I saw her repost her ad I was rather pissed, but replied and calmly asked what happened. She said she didn’t get my email from before, and then when I replied, she didn’t respond again. Then I noticed there was a phone # on the ad so I texted her instead and we made our arrangements over text.
When we arrived at her place she was outside with some other people. They were hanging out with rats in their laps and a bunch of babies in a cage so I was able to pick the one I wanted. I liked his markings, as well as one other, but the other one kept trying to get away from me whereas he was cool with me picking him up. In fact he let me, Joe, and E hold him while we talked to the people about rat stuff. Everyone was very friendly and helpful and I enjoyed meeting them all. We were there about a half hour or so before taking off.
He was born on June 16th and was handled since day one which is why he is even more outgoing than Milo (although Milo was pretty good from the beginning too). I decided as long as he doesn’t show any illness in the next week I will introduce him to Milo next weekend. I want to get them acclimated quickly so Milo doesn’t turn antisocial like Marshmallow. Unfortunately Marshmallow has made it clear he would rather live alone so for now he’s going to get moved to a smaller standalone cage so that the two babies can have the run of the Critter Nation. I feel kinda bad but it’s not fair to them to have to live in the same area and be on edge because of him. If I can find a larger used multi-tier cage something like this then I will get it for him, but I’m not buying one new because I’ve already spent enough money on these guys.