Caring for domestic rats is easy! These little critters will pretty much take care of themselves, but they will need some assistance from you. Keeping rats as pets is simple and inexpensive. The one thing your rat will require from you is love, and some patience. Since rats develop individual personalities like ourselves, their disposition will most likely dictate whether they are overly active and curious (requiring you to be alert for them - rats do make mistakes!) or if they are less active and more incline to be content just to be near you. Be prepared to have plenty of laughs with your pet rat because of their child-like curiousity and almost fearless sense of adventure. Living Space Your rat will be happiest in a wire cage or aquarium with wire top. Since rats are active animals, determine how much time you have to spend with your pet and how much time it is likely to be out of the cage - the less time you have to spend the larger the living accomodations (cage) should be. Since rats are meticulously clean, they prefer their cage to be cleaned frequently. Unconsumed foods should be deposed of after a couple of days to avoid attracting pests. Cleaning the cage every 3-4 days should be suffice to avoid unpleasant odours and the possibility of illness in your pet rat. The cage is going to require some form of bedding. While most pet rodents (hamsters & guinea pigs) do well is wood shavings, this can irritate the respiratory system of a rat. Not all rats react to wood shavings, if you have more than a single rat as a pet watch for signs of respiratory problems - ie:constant sneezing, bleeding nose. Good substitutes range from shredded paper to torn strips of flannel or other cloth. Cloth beddings can be shaken out and washed in a delicates laundry bag and re-used. When you get to scraping the last of your peanut butter out of the jar, place the entire jar into the cage. The rat(s) will enjoy licking every last speck of peanut butter from inside the jar, and then inhabit it like a house! Old balls of twine or wool make great little houses, as do heavy cardboard boxes and tubes. Your pet is going to enjoy the variety of housing materials over time, but remember...don't cahnge the bedding on a fresh batch of babies for at least a week, just to prevent a misunderstanding between you and the mother rat!

Dietary Requirements

One of the most basic requirements for your rat is going to be water! Invest in a good quality water bottle (the cheaper ones can jam up and cut your rat off of it's water supply) and if affordable your rat should only be served purified water. Whether you choose to purify your own water by methods such as boiling or filtration, or to use bottled water, your rat will do better and suffer less problems with it's urinary tract. Although rats can survive just as well on straight tap water, it might be adding unwanted minerals, and other sediments that will not do your rats health justice.

My first big misconception was that rats ate seeds like other rodent pets. Don't bother investing in special rodent feed, etc for your rat. My rats turn their noses up to such food. Being a social animal, and after considering you as part of it's family, whatever you are eating is just fine by them. I give my rats our table scraps and feed them direct from my own groceries. Rats will tire quickly of a redundant menu, just like us they demand variety in their meals. Don't expect a rat to survive on the same food offerings day in and out, they'll eventually lose their appetite and come close to starvation before they'll consume another bite of the same old stuff. Your rat is going to be happy being fed lots of vegetables and fresh fruit, but will avoid onions, garlic, hot peppers, and other extreme foods. They also enjoy cereals and breads, this includes pita breads, cheese sticks, donuts, corn chips, tortillas, etc. If on the rare occassion your rat will not eat a particular breakfast cereal, you should not be feeding it to your family. They also like treats such as chocolates and gummy candies, and love polishing clean your peanut butter and jam jars. In the wild these scavengers would also consume the carcasses of dead animals, and are meat eaters...I would not recommend feeding them raw meats, small portions of cooked meats are plenty enough - we give our rats the bones from our meats to work on. The bones provide both the nutrition required, plus help keep their teeth sharp and cleaned. A couple of times a year I will purchase "cracks" (eggs that have cracked shells and are not suitable for general market) and give them to the rats, it means cleaning their cages when done (so do this just before a cleaning is required). Rats love raw egg, and it keeps their coats shiny...but can be overdone, so limit their intake of raw and cooked egg. Another treat they are fond of is the addition of a bit of honey in their drinking water, to do this you must use hot water and dissolve the honey in, wait for it to be at least room temperature before serving to your rats. Rats will also consume alcohols, so watch your drink...a drunk rat is not a pretty site! Try 2 water bottles, one with fresh purified water, the other with dilluted fruit juice. A happy rat is one that is offered options!