Step one: Buying the Cage

As I type this, I'm currently in the last few minutes of a bidding war on eBay for the cage that I want, a lovely 3-tier steel cage with more than enough room for my rats to play, climb and explore. So while I wait for that to finish, I'll explain why I chose this cage.  

I originally only wanted a single rat to begin with, but after doing some research online I found that due to the social nature of rats, they much prefer to be in pairs or small groups, and that even if you can spend hours playing with them, they can still become lonely and depressed without another rat to play and sleep with. 

This meant I had to rethink my cage plans and start looking for one with enough room for a pair of rats.  

I used this rat cage calculator to help me get a rough idea of the size requirements, and then went looking in local pet shops and online. I found this great cage on eBay, and at approximately 70 x 40 x 100cm, it has plenty of space for the rats to play, climb, explore, eat and sleep. 

Just as I finished typing that paragraph, I won the auction on eBay, so in my next post I will show how I start getting it set up and ready for rats. 

Introduction

Hello and welcome to my blog. In this blog (or rat log) I will be recording the day to day life of owning, caring for and training my pet rats.

I had a couple of pet rats when I was a child, and recently I've been wanting to go back to being a rat owner, and I thought this blog would be a good way to show the process of getting the cage set up, finding the right rats and the day to day life of being a rat owner. 
It will also help me keep track of what we get up to, how they're developing and how well they're responding to training and being taught tricks.