Blog 4: My pets: The cat and the Rat

Hello! Welcome back to my blog.

Today I am very excited because the theme of this post is; My Pets.

In my house in the country we have many pets; 2 dogs, 8 cats, a lot of chickens and my precious White Rat. For not to mention all my pets, I will talk only about two, with whom we share a special bond, these are my female cat "Pelusa" and my female white rat "Chiki".

First I'll talk about the Pelusa/Pelu:

Pelusa pretending to be dead

The Pelusa/Pelu is a long haired cat with pastel coloured spots (brown, lead and white), she is a very good hunter! she often comes with rodents or reptiles for her kittens. I do not remember well who gave us to Pelusa, it was a long time ago, but what I do remember is that she was very small (grew very slowly), it seems that it was because of your genetics since most of their children are small too.

La Pelu is without a doubt the most affectionate cat that I have had, just by looking at our eyes she begins to purr and always wants to be in my arms. If I'm standing, she starts climbing up my pants to my arms, and if I'm sitting she climbs up to my legs and settles down to a comfortable position, where she can sleep for an entire afternoon! She was always like that, affectionate, but it was me who made her extremely affectionate!, this way of being apparently was passed on to her children as well.

She has had many kittens and most of them are in pastel colors. Several have died because of some dogs or cars :c but most have been adopted into other homes :D. Of the 8 cats we have, 5 are Pelusa's children, we recently spayed her because my parents didn't want any more cats!

Pelusa trying to climb into my arms

Photo of the Pelu when he was a baby

Now it's Chiki's turn!

The Chiki is a rat of the race "Rattus Norvegicus", lineage "Sprague Dawley". Its lineage is Albino, which means that it does not have melanin responsible for generating color in the hair, eyes and skin. Thanks to its albino condition, its characteristic color is white with very beautiful red eyes, moreover, she is very sensitive to sunlight, so I always keep it in dark places.

When I was in the first year of college (about 3 years ago), we had to do a practical step of associative conditioning with Rats or humans. If we decided to do the experiment with a rat, then it was our duty to take responsibility for that creature, and as you can imagine, my group wanted to do the work with a rat, it's definitely the best decision I've made in all my college years! (It's actually the only good decision I've made, other than going into psychology :c)

Puppy / Mora Chirimoya

Once we finished that job, due to life circumstances I was the only one available to adopt "Mora Chirimoya". With a friend who was in the working group, we bought her a very big wooden and glass cage (1,5m long, 50cm wide approximately), so Mora Chirimoya had a lot of space to run and play. After buying the cage, we found out that some friends could not adopt their little rat, "Puppy", and since there would be a lot of space in the cage of Mora Chirimoya, I also adopted Puppy. At first it was easy to distinguish them both, Mora Chirimoya was the biggest and fattest, while Puppy was the smallest and skinny, but as time went by, having them with the same conditions, the same amount of stimuli and food, both became like two drops of water, until I could no longer recognize them.

Me and my rats in undercover

We lived very happily together, the 3 of us, I always took them hidden to my house in the country, and back to my apartment in Santiago, until one of them became very seriously ill the year 2018. He couldn't stand up, secreted porphyrin all over his face and spilled blood from his vagina or anus. Taking her to the vet only confirmed what I already knew; disorder probably of genetic-neurological origin, and the best thing for this situation was euthanasia. I was very sad after this, and I could notice my other little rat was very sad too, because her partner had gone:c

The reader who has been attentive to the story will have noticed that neither of these two rats was given the name "Chiki", as I mentioned at the beginning. This is because I didn't know exactly if I had stayed with Mora Chirimoya or Puppy, so I decided to give this rat a new name, "Chiki", to "start from scratch" with my rat.

The vet gave me the Chiki's teeth,
I keep them in this little box

Chiki has also had some disorders, last year she was operated on for a tumor, and now she has a dental occlusion as a result of trauma. Their dental occlusion has had me quite concerned, since the teeth of rats (rodents in general) continue to grow throughout their lives, and the way they spend them is by biting into hard things. Since my rat has deviated teeth, they don't wear out properly, growing in such a way that it gets in the way of his eating, so he doesn't eat properly. Besides, we live in a rather isolated place, I can't find the right food pellets for her (quarantine problems), so lately I have chosen to create her food myself. I make it from hamster food, alfalfa, NESTUM, oats, marigolds and other seeds. I turn all the ingredients to dust, mix them with water and form a dough that I squash into the shape of a biscuit. I put the dough in the microwave and very carefully try to evaporate the water from the dough until it is hard. Still, it's hard for him to eat well, so I give him some pureed food once in a while.

Chiki eating mashed hamster food
and NESTUM

My rat is quite old, it's 3 years old, and the life expectancy of a rat is about 2 to 3 years. She used to run and bite things like crazy, together with her partner they devised ingenious plans to escape from the cage, now she even has trouble using her hind legs:c but he's still my baby rat! <3