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better you care than you dont
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Nov 13, 2024 12:26
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| # ? Nov 16, 2025 06:01 |
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Nov 13, 2024 12:27
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One of my rats came down with a severe respiratory infection and is on a cocktail of antibiotics. It’s breaking my heart to hear him cracking and wheezing though. We’re on night three of treatment and he puts up one hell of a struggle to not take his meds (and I can’t blame him they smell like hell even mixed with stuff). I’m hoping he makes it. This is nerve wracking. Edit: the vet called him a fatty and he’s feeling body shamed and hiding in his cardboard house. I gave him egg since he goes absolutely feral for eggs and I’m worried about his food intake. Rhymenoserous fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Nov 27, 2024 |
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Nov 27, 2024 06:12
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Rhymenoserous posted:One of my rats came down with a severe respiratory infection and is on a cocktail of antibiotics. It’s breaking my heart to hear him cracking and wheezing though. Have you tried mixing it with baby food? Meat-based baby foods work best, imo - they go crazy for the stuff, and it masks the flavour of most medications. (Just avoid anything with dairy, since that can interfere with antibiotics.)
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Nov 27, 2024 16:01
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Falstaff posted:Have you tried mixing it with baby food? Meat-based baby foods work best, imo - they go crazy for the stuff, and it masks the flavour of most medications. (Just avoid anything with dairy, since that can interfere with antibiotics.) Believe it or not neither of these little assholes care about baby food. Of any kind. We tried it as a treat at several points and they always turned it down. So far my best bet has been alternating medicine and malt paste.
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Nov 28, 2024 01:05
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Rhymenoserous posted:Believe it or not neither of these little assholes care about baby food. Of any kind. We tried it as a treat at several points and they always turned it down. I think you may have defective rats...
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Nov 28, 2024 12:28
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to be fair my rats really liked the fruit-based baby foods. so all rats are different [beautiful rainbow]
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Nov 28, 2024 12:34
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Falstaff posted:I think you may have defective rats... Probably. The trick seems to be strawberry ensure mixed with his medicine. Today’s challenge is his guts all hosed up from the antibiotic cocktail. It’s getting a hair gross in the butt region. He did not care for my attempt to clean him up.
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Nov 29, 2024 02:21
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Rat Update for Soup. He’s no longer honking with every breath but he’s still lethargic, but he has a few more days of antibiotics left. If we reach the weekend and he’s still basically in smelly carpet mode it’s back to the vet with him. The vet said he had pneumonia and I was basically a smelly carpet when I had it, I imagine it kinda sucks for a rat too.
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Dec 3, 2024 04:47
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I'm 99% sure that our older rat passed away last night. She's about 2.5 years old, was weakening and slowing down for a few days, and finally refused a treat last night. It was heartbreaking to see another rat take the treat away from her. I think she crawled into an obsfucated, tight corner to die, but this morning it looks like all four of them are down there and they repositioned their little cabin face down in front of the entrance/exit area. So ... obviously I need to deal with this, but considering that I was stressing about even just cleaning the cage less than a month ago this is freaking me out. I know it needs to happen before I leave for the day and death and dead things give me palpable heebie-jeebies, but the remaining three girls are acting like they're grieving and I'm also afraid to upset them. update: Yeah, she's gone. I've been swapping the girls between the two cages as I've had the wherewithal to clean, so I did a bit of a hasty clean on the empty cage, got the three stooges from out of under the corner, and found the deceased with her head right in the corner buried under paper fluff. One of the three stooges really didn't want to leave her side. Getting her into the clean cage was tough. Anyway, I have our girl in fresh paper fluff in a box in the freezer so that my partner can have a proper goodbye whenever he gets to come home. Even in the wake of death, no soap for cleaning the cage out, right? Propaganda Machine fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Dec 5, 2024 |
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Dec 5, 2024 15:31
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I feel for you. The latest Soupdate is unfortunately sad. It’s pretty clear at this point that he had a major stroke during his respiratory infection and isn’t going to recover. Rather than let him try and struggle on with only half a functioning body we’re going to see if a vet can fit us in and put him to sleep. This unfortunately leaves his brother alone until we can find more rats and whatever fresh hell the introduction process is going to be.
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Dec 6, 2024 05:42
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Propaganda Machine posted:I'm 99% sure that our older rat passed away last night. She's about 2.5 years old, was weakening and slowing down for a few days, and finally refused a treat last night. It was heartbreaking to see another rat take the treat away from her. i use dish soap
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Dec 6, 2024 13:54
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Rhymenoserous posted:I feel for you. The latest Soupdate is unfortunately sad. It’s pretty clear at this point that he had a major stroke during his respiratory infection and isn’t going to recover. Rather than let him try and struggle on with only half a functioning body we’re going to see if a vet can fit us in and put him to sleep. I was surprised by how smooth it was with our new three, especially with how skittish they were at first. It's a process but I'm sure your old one will be happy not to be alone. I'm sorry for your loss too. Have you used that vet for euthanasia before? Back with the cancer rat in August/September we just couldn't find anybody who would do it for small animals.
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Dec 6, 2024 14:06
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cumpantry posted:i use dish soap Same. For the occasional deep clean, I use vinegar instead.
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Dec 6, 2024 14:41
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Propaganda Machine posted:I was surprised by how smooth it was with our new three, especially with how skittish they were at first. It's a process but I'm sure your old one will be happy not to be alone. No, we made the decision last night and called around to see if anyone could do it this morning. We have about 4 places in a mid sized southern capital that will even see exotics and this needs doing so I didn’t really care if he went to his “regular”. We’re about to take him in now.
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Dec 6, 2024 18:47
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Rhymenoserous posted:No, we made the decision last night and called around to see if anyone could do it this morning. We have about 4 places in a mid sized southern capital that will even see exotics and this needs doing so I didn’t really care if he went to his “regular”. We’re about to take him in now. Turns out he had a double threat, non obvious cancerous lump around his stomach along with the respiratory infection. Vet said there was pretty much nothing to do but say goodbye. Hard to believe he was terrorizing us on the couch just 3 weeks ago.
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Dec 9, 2024 03:53
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What is it with rats and cancer? Of the four rats I've now seen pass away, two of them had external masses the size of their torsos.
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Dec 9, 2024 03:57
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I've heard it is because they generally don't live past 6 months in the wild, so their DNA gets all fucky after that. But I have no understanding of science
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Dec 9, 2024 08:03
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It is because they are too good for this world.
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Dec 9, 2024 10:23
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Kuule hain nussivan posted:It is because they are too good for this world.
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Dec 9, 2024 21:37
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Kuule hain nussivan posted:It is because they are too good for this world.
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Dec 9, 2024 21:56
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thehoodie posted:I've heard it is because they generally don't live past 6 months in the wild, so their DNA gets all fucky after that. But I have no understanding of science Kuule hain nussivan posted:It is because they are too good for this world. 
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Dec 9, 2024 23:53
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https://i.imgur.com/ZuKESDb.mp4
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Feb 3, 2025 16:07
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That's a good ratto! I can't deny it! I call them "their little stars": 
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Feb 6, 2025 15:42
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My partner is still incapacitated and I'm doing what I can for the girls. I just can't catch a break. I think they're about a year old and I already have a new cancer rat. I noticed a small growth and got her into the vet. They called back, said they could operate maybe, and then never followed up with the email with a quote. In the meantime the tumor has gone from oh-poo poo-that's-a-tumor size to a good few centimeters. 
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Feb 10, 2025 17:29
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One of our girl got something similar. It was probably a breast cancer tumor (not analyzed (becasue $$$) but an educated guess from the vet because often, female rats have this). We could have removed it ($$$) with a high-risk for it to come back. Or, our vet suggested something: like an ormonal implant, subcutaneous, inserted with a syringe, low cost, no operation, no pain. The implant would start an early menopause to our girl and, IF it was a breast cancer, that would stop the tumor to grow and could revert it back a little. Which it did! We kept our girl alive. The implant wasn't made specifically for rats, it was for another animal but we had nothing to lose. Maybe you should try to speak about this!
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Feb 11, 2025 11:44
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Does anybody have advice on dealing with rat mites? I've got one elderly pet rat (2 years, 2 months), the last of her litter, surprisingly really bubbly for her age. I was putting away things after her nightly playtime, I noticed that after touching The Good Basket that there were tiny black dots on my hand that were moving around. I investigated and found these little dots throughout the cage. I did a panic clean of the whole cage, wiping down everything I could, tossing anything made of wicker (goodbye, Good Basket!), tossing/washing the fleece covers and hammocks, and giving the poor rattie a good bath. But I guess I didn't do a good enough job, since I spotted more of the little moving dots in the cage tonight. It might be that all of the cage's platforms are wood blocks, and I couldn't justify disposing of every flat surface in the cage. Anyway, what's the best approach here? I don't think I could keep the cage clean enough to completely eliminate the mites. I've heard that there's medicine that takes care of them, but does it just miraculously work? Is it like that the rat is the mites' only food source, and once she's medicated then the mites start dying out, or is it more involved? Do I need to go through a vet here? Or is it a good idea to do so anyway? Is it easy to find the medicine otherwise? Are there different approaches for different types of mites?
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Apr 21, 2025 08:28
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Last Visible Dog posted:Does anybody have advice on dealing with rat mites? when my girl peppermint got rat mites the vets gave her a dip but also gave me some mite spray for the cage. worth checking in
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Apr 21, 2025 09:39
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when you want to cure your mite problem with a dip
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Apr 22, 2025 01:09
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We live in the countryside and saw two wild rats and two holes in our yard yesterday...I hope the dudes just gently caress off further away, I don't want to have to hurt or kill them.
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Apr 22, 2025 05:08
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Animal-Mother posted:when Haha, I can hear the tune in my head! I ended up taking my rat to the vet. The identified it as rat mites and gave me some topical treatment that goes on the back of the rat's neck. Essentially the same thing you'd use on cats and dogs for flea problems, just a much smaller dosage. Here's hoping it works!
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Apr 24, 2025 05:26
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Is there such a thing as an automated pet feeder that can feed through the cage? Wifi based ideally, to control remotely. So far I only found the usual dog/cat feeders, feeders that would go in the cage entirely (probably not surviving more than five minutes before the rats disassemble the thing) or fish feeders that just drop pellets from the top.
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May 22, 2025 15:49
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