I thought I would start a pet topic.

My dog Loki is 14 and sees a chiropractor about once a month. He adjusts her spine, hips and shoulders. Loki has bad arthritis, so without the adjustments she can barely walk.

I've had rats since the late 70's and my SCA name (historical group)  is Baroness Gwendolyn the Rat Keeper, so I use ratkeeper as my screen name. The two female rats always have the same names Robin and Marian. Robin is always a hooded rat (a coloring), so her full name is Robin the Hooded Rat and her cage mate is Maid Marian. Rats don't live longer than 3-4 years, so I've had a lot of different rats.

I have some very funny rats stories. Here is one of my favorites:

I was eating a steak while sitting on the floor and Robin was running around the room. She came over and was sniffing my steak so I cut a small piece for her and she ran off to eat it. Then the phone rang, so I got up to answer the phone.

Robin saw that I had left and she looked at her small piece of steak and then back at my big piece several times. She then dropped her small piece and ran back to get my steak. She was pulling it off the plate when I found her and a tug of war took place over the steak.

After much tugging, the steak was mine and I put Robin and her small piece of steak back into her  cage. 

My dog had surgery last week to remove some tumors on her belly. Over the weekend she started oozing form her surgical wound. She went to the vet and came back with this huge wrap wound around her belly and back. It's this bright neon orange, and she looks like she is trying to be the "Great Pumpkin".

Gwen

Loki is fine, the tumors were just fatty tumors. One kept growing so when the vet removed it he removed all the tumors he could see--5 more. She also had a tooth pulled.

Two days after surgery, she woke me up. (She sleeps at the side of my bed and when i wake up I open up the curtain so she can see the back yard.) That morning she woke me with her whining., I checked her sititches, I gave her water and she just kept whining. Finally I opened the curtain, and yes that's what she wanted. She was awake and wanted to see outside.

I guess I was sleeping too late for her.

The Kleenex Story

This was one of the first five rats I had, and she had the run of my bedroom. I would open the cage door when I came home and just let her run around.

I used kleenex for her bedding and at some point she discovered the kleenex box next to my bed. She began to take the kleenexes, one by one, back to her cage. When I next reached for a kleenex the box was empty!

I tried replacing the box, and she did it again. I tried turning the box upside down, and she pushed it to the edge of the bed stand, knocked it to the ground, and then she ran down to the ground and emptied the box.

Finally, I  took the kleenex box out of the room. She was highly annoyed that I had spoiled her fun, so she went looking for another source of bedding. When I came back in the room, I found her on the shelf for paperbacks and she was pulling the pages out of  a book and taking them back to her cage. The book she choose was Gone With the Wind, and she was on page 28 when I found her! (I wish I could have seen her actually carrying a page back, since she didn't tear them up- she took the whole page and stuffed it into her cage.)

After that she no longer had free run of the bedroom!

Gwen

This is such a funny story, Gwen!  I would have loved to see the look on your face when your first realized what had happened.

One of my cats has a rather funny, but odd, behavior.  When I am on the phone, I usually pace so that I can try to burn off some calories.  For whatever reason, this seems to rile my cat Sunny, and he will start batting at my legs and whining at me.  Sometimes he gets so upset that he hisses.  I guess he's letting me know what he thinks about my pacing! 

He also can be very melodramatic when it comes to getting his claws clipped.  One time, I had him cradled in my arms while I was clipping his claws, but he must have been having a bad day.  He got so upset that he threw his head back and hissed.  It was really very amusing

Hi Selini,

Your cat story reminds me of what my sister did with the pet rabbit. She would turn the rabbit on it's back and rub the belly and the rabbit would just freeze. I mean rigid freeze. As long as you rubbed the belly the rabbit would stay frozen and then it was easy to handle the feet.

It's some sort of danger response that she stumbled on.

Gwen

Hi Wolfie,

I'm glad you stopped by, and yes please visit us more often. If for nothing else to add a *howl* to our threads.

Gwen

Hi Selini,

Yes, pets are entertaining and if you are an introvert like me, they are an ice breaker in social settings.

I'm the silent one at a party, unless someone starts a topic I know about.

Gwen

Hi Gwen,

I'm more on the introverted side myself and am not usually the first to start a conversation, at least until I get to know someone.  Then I might not shut up.   

But I do like to talk about my pets, especially if someone brings up animals.  I agree that pets are a good icebreaker.  Someone always seems to something funny to tell about their pet, and I always love to hear the stories. 

Hi Selini,

I took pets as an icebreaker a step farther than most people. When I started  working at Renaissance Faires I needed an ice breaker that would get people to come over to me, so I went around with a rat on my shoulder. That's how I got named Ratkeeper.

All of the friends I was working the faire with were a lot more outgoing, and the rat on my shoulder enabled me to interact with the faire patrons without feeling uncomfortable.

In fact the character in the Hagar the Horrible comic strip, had a friend who kept a rat on a string. That character is based on me and my rat.



My best rat story while in a costume:
The rat had been out a long time, so she had curled up in the hollow between my breasts. The bodice (outer corset) covered her so she was quite invisible. A plate of cheese was passed around, which caused the rat to wake up. She suddenly peaked her head out and was looking for the cheese.

The man next to me, who had not known about the rat, said: "I've heard of a living bra, but that is ridiculous."

Gwen