Colin

Here is another one of the boys! Don't you think he looks a bit like me? It could be that he is my Great Uncle Colin! In the first picture Colin is about 3 months old. The second is a year later (yesterday). From looking at pictures on the internet he seems to be a blazed berkshire platinum, His eyes are ruby. Isn't it interesting how his colour has faded? Could he be a husky rat? Husky rats start off almost black and then get more and more grey through time, but I have not seen such a pale one before. Colin is a very interesting colour but he is a bit small and weedy. I am not so scared of him as I am of Billie! When he was younger he climbed around a great deal and was very athletic. Recently, when the weather got cold he developed a slight heat tilt. At first he was quite disorientated and frightened, but now he is getting more and more secure again. There are three possible causes of head tilt. It could have been an inner ear infection caused by mycoplasma pulmonis that all rats have, or it could have been a stroke. Pituitary tumours can also cause head tilts but since Colin is improving now, this seems unlikely. The first seems most likely since Colin also has noisy breathing , undoubtedly myco related. The strange thing is that he did not seem very ill when he got the head tilt. Perhaps it was only a relatively minor attack.