Hoot & Annie, the Nifflers, were the only survivors of a litter of 10. Their mother was my first rat Priscilla and their father was a wild rat.

Priscilla and Abagail will always hold a dear spot in my heart, for they were my first pet rats and introduced me to how cool these critters as pets are.

How they came to live with me is a little unusual.

After building the ratty grotto and annex, the biggest problem turned out to be how to keep the shelves clean. My ratties did not get the litter box concept at all, which isn’t too kind on the nose. I tried fabric liners

When a week after we took in a couple of stray rats and one of them had 10 babies, it was clear the cage I bought from Craig’s List wasn’t going to cut it. (These were tame white rats that had ended up outdoors, but the father was probably a wild rat). Not knowing anything [...]

If you search in forums for exercise wheels, there are lots and lots of different opinions about which are better. And I’ve discovered as I’ve researched, different wheels are definitely better for different pets. So here is my review of exercise wheels

One shortcoming of the Ratty Grotto is that the shelves are too shallow for an exercise wheel. And Hootie has a lot of enthusiasm (evident with all her escape attempts). So decided to build an extension. My ulterior motive is to have a place where I can video them testing out different exercise wheels and [...]