I am always super vigilant about everything concerning my rats and attribute this slip to my being overwhelmed by my wedding last weekend.  Even so, it's no excuse...

Today, my phone rang while I was putting more food in the rat cage.  I was running late to meet my cousin (in town for the wedding) and ran out the door while I was on the phone.  I was almost at the place where I was supposed to meet my cousin when I panicked about having closed the rat cage.  I do that every night when I go sleep, I always check and it's always closed.  I almost ran back home to check but figured I was being neurotic.

Two hours later I arrive home to an open cage door and as I ran over to the cage I saw my two sweet babies curled up in their corners.  I am so lucky and am in shock they didn't go exploring.   I can't believe I left the door open but am thankful nothing bad happened.  I never would have been able to forgive myself if something had happened (and my husband would have been furious).

I still can't believe they were just sitting there.  My dwarf Oliver is usually a little explorer.  Lucky for me today wasn't one of those days.

I think I'm feeling especially guilty because we just got new furniture and the rats don't have as much room to roam and climb on the new sofa.  We're bringing our old futon back inside so they still have room to roam (they love the futon).  The rats run our lives.

I happens.  My dad fed them once while I was on vacation, thought he shut the door, and when he got home from work many hours later, all four were in there, looking at him like "what's up?"  I suspect that rats know when it's out time and when it's not and even if the door is open, it's not out time if mom or dad isn't there. 

I'm hoping my same situation came out okay.  The cage for my girls is a modified rabbit cage.  It was one wire floor with a large pan for the droppings to fall into.  We modified it to be a large three floor cage,  The bottom pulls out for cleaning, plus it has two doors.  When the girls are on the bottom, you have to pull the base out to get at them.  One was on the bottom and one was on the top.  I took them both out with me one day.  When I put them back, I put them in through the top door and left.  It was several hours later when I came back to see that I hadn't closed the base.  It's a perfectly understandable mistake, right? 

  The problem is, the boys get free roam of the bedroom during the day and the girls get it at night.  When I went in, the girls were out running around with the boys.  This was a couple days ago, so I'm going to have to watch them carefully for the next couple weeks.  I'm thinking positively, there were no signs of anyone being in heat.  That doesn't necessarily mean nobody was, but at least there were no signs of it.   

It happens to the best of us. When Mad-Eye and I were fighting so hard to get him back to health and save his life, I forgot in all the attention he was getting to fill the grumpy old men's water bowl. I felt so horrible, but you know, once I filled it up and BooBoo and Jett had drank their fill, they both jumped in my lap as if to say "It's okay dad, you had a rough week" considering their normal anti-social behavior, it really warmed my heart right after Mad-Eye had passed!