Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Anonymous asked: A friend of mine got me a male rat because my previous pair had died. Since I refuse to let my rats live alone, I had to go pick up another boy for him. Introductions went fine and they mostly ignore each other, but they refuse to live together. It’s fine if the cage door is open, but as soon as it’s closed the larger one goes after the small one. I’d assume it was playing if the larger one didn’t keep making the small one bleed and scream. Any ideas for this?

being-lola-star:

ratpeopleproblems:

How old is the small one? I’ve noticed young rats can try to dominate quite a bit (in my experience) and that might be annoying the larger one - if the larger one is older it also might not like playing behaviour (when I got a new boy called Topher, the alpha of the cage was at least 6 months older and was quite lazy and continuously beat Toph up as he was too active).

On another note, neutering rats tends to help with aggression - maybe try neutering the larger boy and see if that helps him calm down? Also, how big is your cage? I’ve found that intros have worked brilliantly for me in large cages but in smaller ones they don’t have their own space. I don’t know if the larger boy is going after the smaller boy or whether it’s the other way round and the larger boy is just getting angry - but if it’s the first one I definitely recommend a neuter.

Does anyone else have any ideas? (ask me in the ask box)

Part of me really wants to know if Topher is named after Topher Brink :) Because I have a Bennett (even though Benny is a he, I just loved Summer’s character too much to *not* name Bennett that)

Yes he is C: I have Victor too, I also have Oscar which goes along with the phonetic alphabet theme the Dollhouse has going on with the actives.

I’ll probably make a page introducing my rats soon, I haven’t quite gotten around to it (that or I’ll do a giant post on my blog). I love the name Bennett! I’ve got so many Dollhouse names if I were to get girls eventually.