Happy Ratmas

A few days ago it was Christmas! This was a new experience for me and my mum and we got very excited about it. Here we are unwrapping our present. Ever since we have been enjoying munching on turkey bones, macadamia nuts and we even got to have some delicious brussel sprouts. The humans also offered us something called Christmas pudding but we were having none of that....ugh!

Today we got another Christmas present - a new house! It is so much bigger and posher than our old house. It came in the post from Martin's cages. The little human allowed the big human to put it together, which he did splendidly. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon jumping around in the new house. Can you see me out exploring in the picture?

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Hooded Rats

I have been surfin' some Japanese rat blogs. From what I can make out most pet rats in Japan are either husky or hooded. There are also some white rats, and more solid colours too, but they seem less common. Bill and Boris who live here are almost one colour all over - with only a splash of white on their chests. Bill is especially unusual since he has funny dumbo ears and also rex fur. Mummy and Colin are, however, huskies (or roan, as it seems to be called in the US and UK these days). As you can see from the picture I don't like to be defined by silly human definitions and am confusing them by being both hooded and husky.

Japanese Pouched Rat

Africa is home to the largest species of rat in the world, the African Pouched Rat. In the USA some people keep these gigantic rats as pets! I think they would eat straight through the walls of a typical wooden Japanese house in about 5 minutes, so I hope there aren't any here!

The Giant Japanese Pouched Rat is an even rarer species. Like the African variety it is 2 foot long, but unlike the African variety, it has two heads. Here is a picture of one that the little human photographed just this week. Pretty scary huh?

Incidentally, Africa is also home to the world's smallest mouse , the African Pygmy Mouse. This is probably a better pet for a Japanese household. They are incredibly small, clean and don't smell, so suitable for Japanese tidy-living in a small space. However, they are also quite fragile and not fond of people in the same way we rats are, so it is probably more like looking after a decoration than a pet. They are also said to be more seriously noctural, whereas we rats can be woken up at most times of day and will play. Since the quarantine laws changed in Japan in Sept. 2005, it seems to be difficult to find these pygmy mice in pet shops, although I wouldn't have thought it would be so hard to breed them here.

Nearly doubled

I am now 140g, which is nearly double what I weighed when I came into the new rat house 2.5 weeks ago. The smaller human tells me I am only going to be a little rat (who is she to talk!) but I am hopeful I will be bigger than Mummy, who is only 210g. For comparison, PhilBossRat is 550g!

It is not that clear in the picture, but I am developing some long hairs at last. You can see how my fur is lighter near my belly. Mummy says that they are called guard hairs and that the new fur will spread all over me from toe to tip in the coming few weeks. Soon I will be a grown up!

As you can see I have been reading a variety of books to improve my mind. In Japanese Buddhism you can gain wisdom by turning round a revolving library of books. In ratty Buddhism the same knowledge is gained by nibbling on a wide variety of books.

Movies

Lots of things happen in the new rat house that didn't use to happen at the old place. One of the most exciting is that we regularly get to watch exciting movies. One of the most inspirational ones was called Mission Impossible 2 which involved a human doing things like hanging from their finger tips from cliff edges as well as posing in order to look as pretty as possible.

Ever since we saw the movie, me and Mummy have been practising our moves. Of course we are both already more attractive than the actor so we don't need to practise that part. Hanging from fingertips does, however, require lots of practise. While Mummy has been jumping from the BIG human's shoulder to claim a fingernail purchase on the bookcase, I have been hanging off the smaller human's clothing by my toenails and then just when I am only hanging by only one toe I swing myself round and climb vertically to the human shoulder. This is a lot of fun and, since we hear that the lead actor role is now vacant, we are hoping that we will soon get offered deals to star in future Mission Impossible movies.

Unfortunately the humans' photography is really not very good so we are not sure that the talent scouts will discover us! This movie is of my Great Uncle Colin. As you can see he was a fantastic stuntrat in his younger days.