I haven't posted anything about our rats lately...and I decided what better to post about than our own little ninja rats.
Today makes the fifth (or maybe it's the sixth?) time in a month and a half that Shizuku has managed to escape under her cage despite my best efforts to prevent it. She's a ninja rat. She has to be. She either hides out in the ramp cover (which is nice and holey on the underside now, thanks to her ) until we take the ramp out to clean the cage, at which time she makes a break for it, or she just hitches a ride on the cage door and jumps down the moment the cage is open and makes a break for it. This time I was playing with them, sitting right in front of the cage, effectively blocking them from getting past me and under the cage. Shizuku didn't like this and she decided to just bite my foot - which was barring her escape - and take off the second my foot moved.
It took me a good ten minutes to catch her and I had to move her cage. Repeatedly. I finally caught her climbing the side of Sai's cage. I would've gotten some pictures, but for once I didn't know where the camera was and I wasn't going to search for it with Kuroneko in the room (too high a chance of him attacking Shizuku, since he still hasn't learned not to go after them).
I will get some pictures next time she pulls this, though, and I don't doubt that it'll be soon. She's a sneaky little thing.

Then there's our little Lucky-bug. He's allowed supervised free run of the house for a little while every day because we know he can be trusted not to chew on cords or hole up in the couch like some of the other rats *coughMiacouch*. He's fast when he gets going, and he'll take off if he thinks we're going to put him back before he's done running. Lucky also has the ability to slip past us and into another room without us even knowing it. Just last night (or maybe it was the night before...) the only reason I realized where he was - I thought he was behind the couch - was because I heard rustling plastic under the armoire in my room down the hall. And sure enough, there he was, sitting under my armoire trying to get one of my Life-Savers mints out of it's wrapper. I reached for him and he bolted out from under the armoire, out my door, down the hall and was behind his cage before I was even out the door after him myself Of course, he took the candy with him. It took mom and I to catch him and take the candy from him; I don't think he cared that he was caught, but he sure didn't want to relinquish that candy . He got some baby food, though, so hopefully that made up for it. I wouldn't have even minded letting him have that mint, since he doesn't get sweets very often and worked so hard to hang onto it, but I didn't think it'd be good for him. So sweet corn casserole baby food it was. And I'm pretty sure between him and Ukitake - who is also allowed free run of the house - there's quite a stash of interesting things behind our couch. There's no telling what they've managed to get past us. Gotta love the little ninja rats