The Great Escaping Tuffy!

Okay so came down yesterday morning,before i got to do my usual little rattie headcount i noticed the sittingroom in disarray it turns out that despite having the cage doors tied with additional chains,as well as being closed Tuffy had gotten out,visited the other cages and bitten Dizzies toe/toenail through the cage Dizzies fine,it was more the toenail and a bit of skin of the tip of her toe but all i saw first was a few biggish drops of blood on the tissue on the cage Eoghan found a little stash Tuffy had made with rattie food she had found as well as garlic sauce and roquito peppers from leftover pizza,and she managed to knock off Smokie and Noodles water bottle! Despite giving herself a fairly big fright,shes trying it again so the cage is as locked up as humanly possible (great fun trying to clean it now,takes half an hour to open a door!)If she does it again i actually dont know what im going to do!Could have been a lot worse i know but still Laura do you think that the cage i showed you,the one we need to do up would be big enough for 4 rats if we were really stuck?HOPEFULLY it wont come to that...

I'm so glad I'm not the only one! This morning I came downstairs to find all the tubs of fish food knocked all over the floor. We were blaming mice until I was about to leave the house a couple of hours later only to see Buffy running through the bars of the boys cage. I swear, there was not a single gap I could find in the girls cage to explain how she got out. Jess was still in the cage, snoring her little head off in the hammock, but Buffy was off with the boys for who knows how long. I have two of those little padlock things on each door to the cage, and all the pink bubbles at the side (which is where they got out last time) are inverted and stuck in place with steel clips. There's absolutely no way she got out of any of those! I have concluded that if a rat really wants to escape from somewhere, they can and will achieve it by any means possible. Buffy is as rebellious as Jess is sweet.

You need to be careful Babs - rats getting pregnant is not fun, especially when you don't know their history... Your boys should be in cages with narrower bar spacing, and your girls should be in cages they can't escape from

Grace- I think that cage would be OK for 4

xx

It's maybe an instinct in Buffy to get to the boys. I keep an intact male dog and 3 intact females, and when the girls are in season, they will try to get to the male and he to them, so gotta be super careful to ensure they can't. But I know it isn't easy when they really want to get to one another. I did have one occasion a couple of years back where my boy managed to run from living room to garden and spend 2 minutes with one of my girls before I realised; he'd managed to climb on sofa and out the window to her! So had to take her straight to vets for her 2 very pricey 'morning after' injections!

I don't have any probs myself with my rats - they have never escaped from their cage and there has been no evidence of them trying to. But then I only have 2 female rats and no male, so there's no incentive like that for mine to. But if shes been with the boys, you might have babies on the way now!

I have always kept intact males and intact females - many of - in the same space together. Sometimes you get one that will do anything to get to the opposite sex (though it's pretty rare in my experience) - so you make sure that they are in cages they cannot get out of.

xx

I agree with Zoundz. This is serious and you need to sort it out! Having litters is not easy or fun and it's really not fair on the rats either.
I've always kept intact female and male rats and never had them get into each others' cages.
What you're doing is not good.

Good news. I took Buffy out while the lads were having their run in the kitchen under mam's supervision, and let her have at the boy's cage. She tried everything to get in, as she always does, but no amount of squeezing worked. She's just too big by a few inches. I'd assumed when I saw her running down the side of their cage yesterday that she'd done the same as last time and squished her way in, but thankfully she's gotten a bit bigger since then and won't fit no matter how much she tries. We're in the clear! Bad news; I still have absolutely no clue how she got out in the first place. I've moved their cage into my room so that if they do get out they're at least away from the lads, but I'm honestly stumped. The cage looks as secure as ever. Buffy has always been a little escape artist though, so I might just add a few of those little locks to more areas on the cage to be safe. Thanks as always, guys. So relieved she didn't get in!

That's Mental. I have never had an issue with escaping rats. I had a Hamster (jim) the same time I had my first rat Bernard and I found out he had escaped and found him climbing on the top of Bernard's cage and Bernard had a hold of his foot. It was 3 in the morning and I was awoken to an almighty screech and got to Jim in time before he lost his foot. So now I have been keeping pets in seperate rooms, let alone seperate cages.

When I was a younger I had a pet mouse, beautiful colours, you would warm to him immediately, the trouble was he was a great escape artist. Even when bringing him home in the car he escaped, and my mother was driving!!!! She was great and stayed calm, while he was running around the car and my brother and I trying to catch him, and she still driving!!! We caught him and had no problem in giving him his name, yes, you guessed it, Houdini. He did escape a few times with us, but he always turned up. He was a character, even after 25years I can still see him and his mischief, eyes. Steve