Hello everyone, I'm new here :D , my name is Lisa, but online I prefer to be called Lilly. I'm 22 years old and I have 2 wonderful rats.

Ruby is the oldest, she is a 1yr. 3 month old broken blue colored female that I got from a local pet store.

Merlin is the male, he is just over 1 yr. old. He is a brown/black hooded.

I'd love to tell more but I have to go :cry: , will try to write more about them later.

hello and welcome!

Hi Lilly, welcome to the forums :)

I hope you'll find time to post a picture of your ratties, soon!

Welcome! :D

welcome lilly :)

Hi everyone, nice to meet all of you :D . Now that I have some more time I can tell you all alittle more about my 2 wonderfull ratties :wink: .

As I stated in my previous post Ruby is the oldest, I purchased her from a local pet store as a 2 month old baby. She was the cutest one there, in fact the owner liked her so much she put Ruby in a special cage out front so more people would see her. I had just lost my rat Buddy and was looking for a new love, I saw Ruby in the window and it was love at first sight.

Merlin was a different story altogether. I live in a very small town, and I do rat education with my local 4-H association, so a lot of people know that I love rats. One frigid January morning last year, I walked out onto my front stoop to let my dog out, and found a box. In the box was a tiny baby rat, barely a month old. He was filthy, covered in fleas, and so skinny I could count every bone in his body :cry: . Slowly the vet and I nursed him back to health, and he's a happy and healthy adult. :D

I look forward to meeting more rat lovers, and hearing all about your beautiful ratties.

Hey, welcome! I was wondering, were you considering getting Ruby a female buddy and Merlin a male buddy? Rats are very very social and do best with others of their kind =)

I would love to get buddies for each of them, but the problem is that I live at home with my Mom ( yes I'm 22 yrs. old, I do have a job, but I don't make enough to live on my own), and she hates rats 8O . She barely tolerated Ruby, then when I found Merlin she said that I could keep him but no more rats until these 2 pass away :cry: . So I have to be content with the 2 babies I have. I did put their cages right next to each other, and they get plenty of play time with me, as well as suppervised interaction with each other.

An option is to have them fixed and put them together, no harm in doing that and I've heard of many happy rat households with mixed genders.

I was planning on doing that with my ratties. :)

I agree having them fixed may be an option. Please don't let them play even supervised, mating literally takes seconds with these guys!

I'll consider fixing them. Guess I should have specified what I meant by supervised play time. They are out on the floor with me and each of them is on a a harness and leash, they can't touch each other.