Ratablog

Oatmeal

The shortest distance between two points...

In this case, the points are the bottom of the bowl and Calle's mouth.

Black beans & rice

Not long after I got Bob he came down with a bad respiratory infection. The poor little guy needed both Lasix to get the fluid out of his lungs and baytril for the infection, and he was refusing to eat so we had to force the meds into his throat with a syringe.

It was also terrible seeing him ignore food, because he needed to get his strength back. For days I tried tempting him with everything to no avail.

Finally...black beans and rice. I suspect that the day he ate the black beans and rice (gobbled 'em down, in fact) was the day the medicine had finally kicked in and he was feeling better, not that the beans and rice were so irresistable...but whatever reason, I was overjoyed to see him eat.

Whenever I have black beans and rice I give him a bowl, and he gobbles 'em right down, as you can see on Bob Cam here.

Fooled ya!

I've been trying to cut back on treats for the girls because they are, well...fat. The problem is, they are right next to Bob, and Bob gets treats constantly because he's old and I spoil him. (Maybe that's a bad reason to give him constant treats, but when I'm the equivalant of his age, God willing, I intend to indulge in constant treats myself.) Anyway, the girls see him getting treats, and they hang on the cage bars and look like little rat Oliver Twists. I feel so mean saying no.

Awhile ago we bought some rat food (Regal Rat) from Oxbow Hay Company. They liked it okay...it went faster than lab blocks but not as fast as Nutro. But somehow the bag of food ended up in a cabinet before we finished it.

One evening when the girls were begging, I took three pieces of the Regal Rat and handed them out. Well, each girl ran to her separate corner and gobbled it down, then begged for more.

When I put just one piece in, they did the stash-and-grab game. I've never seen them do that with regular food. I guess it's all in the distribution...if I made them beg for lab blocks, lab blocks would be a treat. If I put a bowl of yogies in the cage, I wonder if they'd ignore them?

Ratties wanna cracker?

When the girls and Curly were out playing on the bed tonight, I gave them each a cracker. (Kashi's cheese "Tasty Little Crackers"--healthy junk food.) Each rat munched awhile, then Curly got bored, dropped his cracker, and wandered off.

He wandered over to Schwartz...and proceeded to steal her cracker.

No problem. Schwartz took Pinky's cracker.

Pinky spied Curly's abandoned cracker.

Leather looked up from her cracker to see Pinky going for Curly's cracker and decided she could beat Pinky to it.

Curly took Leather's cracker.

And so on, and so on. It took them a half an hour to eat the crackers, and I was rolling the whole time. They are better than the Three Stooges.

Guacamole

Here's today's cute embedded picture...Schwartz and Pinky enjoying some guacamole.

They love it. By the time I turned around to take pictures of the boys, they had finished theirs already.

Schwartz says "It's ok, it's the good kind of fat!"