Goosemoose Pet Portal

i moved to a apartment a little over a month ago, and no one has a problem with my rats being here. But today my roomie voiced her concern over their smell. She is from Jamaica and she knows the smell of rats, and it makes her sick. She says she don't have a preblem with them but the smell from them means she can't open her bedroom door to allow heat in, and she has thrown up because of the smell of them and is worried about her health. She just wants somthing that will mask the smell. Which is reasonable. I'm going to be keeping my door closed, and i alreday wash them once a week, so its not that they smell excessively, its just "rat smell" which idon'r even notice, and that makes it hard for me to know when i need to clean more. anyone have any ideas on what kind of cleaner i could use? i heard somthing about a citris oil degreaser that is supposed to work well and be natural and have a citrus smell that can actually benifit a rats respiratory system *diluted i assume* I'l going to get a stick leecher that sucks stink out of the air, not cover it up, maybe a box of baking soad too.

any ideas? i don't want my rats to turn my roomate relationship upside down... :-\

i think it's BS... at the very least it's psychosomatic...
i mean, if no one else can smell it, neither can she... i mean, how many rats do you have??? 

anyway,
cell-sorb + is really good...
if you put baking soda (not sure this would help at all in a small area) and run an air filter, or just get one--tell the other roomie all about them... 'cause she's a loony.  i mean, you don't share a room even, right???  it'll probably work to just tell her about the stuff and not even really do it, esp. in the case of a little box of baking soda...
also, be sure the rats don't get at it since it's probably not too good for them...
also, not sure that you really need to bathe them that much...i'd worry about overdyring their skin and tails.

perhaps use small towels as bedding/liners for the cage shelves and other sleeping areas and wash those every week (change them daily)... or something you can throw out every day, tho' that's less environmental.

sheesh... worried about her health?  but only wants the odor covered??? whatever. people like that get right up my nose. if the rats are in your room and your door is closed, then she's being mental. 

imho  heehee

sometimes a few bowls of vinegar or even your coffee grounds left in a small dish will absorb odors..

There's this stuff I think Kim's Ark sells it. Tap-A-Drop or Nil-Odor...Something like that. Some people in the UK told me about it, and all you do is add a drop or so of it to the cleaning water. Also you can put a drop on a tissue and leave it out in the room with the ratties.

http://www.kimsarkrescue.org/

Goto the Ark Store, and then to the cleaning supplies page. It's right at the top.

edited because I'm insensitive.  :-\ I wasn't trying to be.

I only have the 1 room mate, she lives in the attic of the house (old house converted into 3 apartments, we live in the top one)with no heater or vents to allow heat in.
You have to understand that she is from another culture, one where they encounter rats more frequently then we do, and probably end up with alot of rat infestation problems. So obviously the smell of rats comes with a stigma, much like the stigma that makes people cringe at the word rats.
And she says the smell bothers her then i have to respect that, It is my responsibility as a tennent here to ammend by the other tennants wishes, they did not afterall choose me to live with them, and she's been here longer, so she has a more set out routine, which originally did not invole the smell of rodents.
She also told me in a respectful manner, and i told her when i moved in to let me know if the smell bothers her, I wouldn't want to live next to someones room with sweaty gym cloths stink wafting out the door. She knows that i do not smell them because i am used to the smell.
i have 6 rats, and i don't wash THEM every week, i wash the cage, i sould have been more specific about that, once the cage is clean the clean any smell off of themselves with grooming.
Ive cleaned today and had the door closed which she says helps, and that she didn't notice the smell.

Also looking back at my post i realized all the typos made me seem like a child, yikes :shocked2:

I can believe that she could vomit over the smell.  We only have two in a a four ft cage it's 4 ft tall, 3 ft wide, and 2 ft deep), and I am very allergic to them.  By the 3rd day after cleaning walking by their cage will cause me to have problems breathing and I will/have vomitted before.  We have an air filter, and there is not much of a scent.  I can totally understand both sides of this.  Definitely change out the bedding more often, every 3-4 days. 

We try and change the hammock every other day.  We also use carefresh bedding, and are in the process of litter box training the boys (haha).  Just make sure to store the soiled clothes somewhere where she can't smell them.  Touching the boys causes me to break out in rashes and my throat starts to swell.  The ionic breeze air filter works very well, we got it at radio shack for about $200.  There are probably better ones on the market, but it works, and no filter to change, just a wand to clean.  A hepa filter would work better, but we can't afford the filters every few months.  We also let them nest in cheap TP and my husband cleans that up every night to every other night.  We actually hang it so they can pull off the amount they want to use - it's cute. 

Good luck!

I think she's imagining things.   I visited the foster home in our area yesterday.  They had 5 rats in a 10 by 10 room and they clean everything once a week.  I couldnt' smell anything and I am NOT used to rat smell.

She can certainly burn a candle or add some sort of air fresherner to HER living area as well.  The only thing I can think of is to use some plug-ins or whatever in your apartment and hope the smell wafts through the vent system.

I mean if the smell that was offending her was the bathroom odors , would that be your problem???

However, I do applaud your efforst to be considerate of her and your neighbors.

Andrea

I think it's probably a mix of many things.

I've had the slightly hysterical roomate who would scream at the sight of a fly and well, let's just say that she never would have entered my room and I once remember her using about a gallon of bleach to clean the bathtub after I had used it to clean the caget top, never mind I had just passed maybe 50 gallons of soap and water in there.

She kept making nasty comments about them and going "ewwww" and so on. I remember one day when the temperature got too hot I put them downstairs, on the same level as her room ... not IN her room obviously and she just freaked. Now we're talking 4 clean females in a freshly cleaned cage ... the only smell was that of aspen and she started going like "omg, I can smell them, I'm going to throw up" and yaddy ya.

A lot of it was in her head. She had many issues about how people looked, smelled, dressed, etc. so I just let her be as hysterical as she wanted. I remember her raving about "if I had know that there were rats, I never would have come" and so on ... but it was really dumb given that it was a "pets allowed" place.

I think that when people decide that they are upset about something they can psych themselves into feeling even more upset and ill than they actually are. The mind is a powerfull thing.

Do you have other roomates? Perhaps you can ask them to test the smell, or even better, some random stranger who doesn't live there. Ask them if they can smell it. This way you can have a better idea of how much is real and how much is in her head.

You can always up your cleaning routine a bit. Do a daily poop and pee patrol, removing the damp litter and raisins and chainging any cloth item in the rage. This will help a great deal and doesn't have to be super time consuming either. An air purifier (not to be confused with crap that only adds some flowery smell to mask the bad smell) can probably do some good. I've heard good things about charcoal balls or something similar. It's not dangerous to your ratties provided it's set in an area where they can't reach it. I've also head of a charcoal plug in type tying. It doesn't disperse a smell but rather absorbs odors.

I am not saying that some of it isn't in her roommates head.  However my mom is very sensitive to smells.  Perfumes, household cleaners, deodorants, soap.  It causes her to sneeze and cough and turn red and she has said that if she doesn't get away from the smell it makes her sick to her stomach. 

Now having said that about my mom,  she also never gets sick in my house while I have had bunny or when we had Belle and has been over to see the new boys(our three baby boys came home Sat.) She has spent the night in the house with the kids sitting when we went away on our anniversary and no problem.  She didn't like to go to my sister-in-law and brothers house when they had the Piggies cause she said they smelled(I dint think my s-i-l changed things with enough frequency).  Shes also gone to pet stores where we have spent an hour shopping and then she has also walked into a pet store with me and walked right back out.  I;ll admit I have gone straight to this pet sotres owner and said they don't take care of the animals well enough cause we had been in pet stores with more animals that didn't smell as bad. Stink!!! :o

Now to the point I change my kids litters and wash cages every week.  Scoop nasties every night as well as wash their food and water dishes.  But most people don't know we have these animals until they see them.  Also an air purifier couldn't hurt anyone.  We have two. 

Hope that helps some.  I just had to defend the roommate a little cause of my mom. ;D

Sand

i should have added that when it comes to smells she has a very weak stomach, some people are l ike that just like some people puke over the sight of blood... :-\

well, i think you are being very understanding and stuff...
i mean, i'd probably never actually tell her that i thought she was crazy, even tho' i would think it and tell my friends  :yelcutelaugh:
at any rate, do whatever you can think of, just be sure it's nothing that could make the rat allergic or damage their lungs...
lots of suggestions here...
good luck!

I agree that you are being very understanding, and that's being a good roommate.  I don't think the roommate is nuts, I have a very sensitive smeller, and I can smell the rat urine soon after cleaning the cage along with changing and cleaning everything in the cage.  I can easily tell the difference between dog, cat and rat urine also.  They all have distinct smells.  Rats themselves don't smell to me, just the urine.  My hammocks and igloos are the first and worst things that smell, so they are washed almost everyday.  I also have a urine neutralizer spray, (Anotec), which works temporarily.  It has a smell also, but at least it's not the rat urine smell.  It's all natural & safe.  I get it at Da-Mars, www.damars.com.  My husband just told me that they will send a free sample if you go to "free samples" on their website.

i can;t find the free sample section. i also bought a deodorizer for outside of my room and one for inside which is sprayed away from the cage and falls out of the air quickly so it won't hurt their lungs, i also got 2 baking soda boxes, one iwth the removeable pannels for in my room. everything seems to smell better.

i also couldn't find a free sample on the website.

Could the type of bedding be exacerbating the smell?  I know carefresh STINKS to me.  But I like aspen.  Also, heat and humidity do numbers on smell in my experience. 

Try the Nil-odor.  And as others suggested, a daily wiping of shelves/poo scooping/etc. may really help.

i don't think it is necessarily true that if "most people" can't smell the rats, than there is no way this person could. some people
ARE much more sensitive to smells and if it is a smell that makes you sick, well you really can't help something like that. she sounds like a decent person i'd highly doubt she is just making it up and choosing to turn it into an issue. i think its cool you are being very understanding and trying to work through the problem maturely. the only thing i can suggest that hasn't been already - i think at walmart (and probably other places) in the pet section there are these small netted bags of what look like little stones or rocks. i forget what they are called but the idea is that the stones absorb smell. i know it sounds  a little sketchy, and i was very sceptical. i bought them just to give it a try (not for rats, for near my cat's litterbox)  and i couldn't believe HOW WELL THEY WORKED!!! they are very inexpensive and you can re use them again and again by just leaving the bag in the sun for a day every few months or so.  it might make a difference just by absorbing what little odor may be there that you can't even smell. again, it looks like just a little net full of white stones. good luck!