# Playtime on bed for caged ratties = Highly recommended!



## Jackie (Jan 31, 2013)

Okay so I got tired of holding my rats on my couch (although it has a couch cover) because of the lack of space and worrying they'll pee and poop on it. 
I've heard of putting the rats on your bed plenty of times but just tried it today for the first time. Just took a blanket I wasn't using and spread it over the bed. They LOOOOOOVED it! And it reinforced the fact in my mind that they loved me. They were crawling over me the whole time. Only bad part is Cami loves nipping socks (she once scared a poor 4 year old but I didn't realize she'd do it to me too). 
Definitely a great place to bond with your rats!







Fontina is just a blur coming from under my arm, haha.


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## Rumy91989 (Dec 31, 2012)

Yep! When I need a quiet night without the girls running around and getting into trouble I just pile rattie blankets on the bed, lay down, turn on the TV, and relax. They LOVE it!  So cute!


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## Patientzero (Jan 12, 2012)

I bring mine on my bed to watch things with me a lot (accept Hanna, she tries to pull the keys out of my Mac's keyboard!) they love it, Binx likes to cuddle up on my shoulder when I watch netflix  Just had all of Scout's babies out on my bed today and they went crazy running about and wrestling all over, they defiantly like the bed the most for romping about.


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## Hlgphotos (May 26, 2013)

They dont jump off?? Ive been wanting to try but am terrified they jump off and run


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## Flora (Aug 30, 2012)

Mine nibble on socked feet too!


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## Dayumie (May 6, 2013)

Mine go on my bed all the time! They love playing between the sheets and pillow cases and just chill out. I've had them go near the edges of my bed often and it scared me at first but I just give a strick command of NO and them head straight back to me! I don't trust any place more than my bed to play with them, other than their cage and my hands/shoulders/pockets.


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## Jackie (Jan 31, 2013)

it depends on the rat. Some rats will be more risky in jumping than others. I never had problems with them jumping off the couch but I'm watching them carefully on my bed since it's not that high.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

Ahhh the bygone days of innocence... playing on the bed with my ratties.... 

Its' 11 PM do you know where your ratties are? I just realized I let Amelia out this morning and got distracted... Time to call the renegade rodent back to the reservation..... Amelia, come out sweetie... Waiting, waiting... Amelia come to daddy... waiting, waiting... AMELIA!!! You mangy rat, get out here!.... there goes a tail in the shadows.... Calling again "Amelia,come here sweetie where's my little gurl" (back to being nice)....waiting, waiting... 

There are the whiskers I've been waiting for... Amelia just showed up. She looks tired, makes me wonder where she's been and what she has been doing all day. 

Now napping, not eating or drinking.... stranger yet? She must have been somewhere with food and water... (that can't be good) It's starting to make me wonder. Verily and and soothely I miss the days when she would just play on the bed or couch or sit on my desk like a flower pot.

Oh well, no rat phobic person noticed her lurking in the shadows... so all's well that ends well..... This has been going on for a couple of weeks now.... So what's wrong with her nice comfy cage and cuddling with her roomie? Why do I even bother?


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## Jackie (Jan 31, 2013)

They all want to be on my shoulder at once which gives me bad cases of tail-in-mouth.


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## alexn (Sep 30, 2012)

Mine all go on the bed quite a lot. What we do is throw an old hoodie in the middle and let them run. They LOVE that hoodie, it's dark, there's space for them to run and hide in it, plus there're many ways in and out. 

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## ratclaws (Nov 11, 2012)

My rats always go on my bed immediately during free range. I then place them on the floor or let them figure their own way down onto the floor; they usually climb down one of the metal legs of the frame. My rats love coming onto my bed, and destroying my bedsheets! I really don't mind though, I pay for them so I'm not really losing out or anything. They love climbing up and being nosy to see what I'm up to!


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## Cashew1992 (May 18, 2012)

I've not had my ratties long but they've had play time on my bed twice now and they adore it! We like to pile up a few blankets and a couple of stuffed toys in the middle and sit or lay at either end; they go bonkers and run all over the place then Frodo will snuggle up on my shoulder . 

I think it's really helped me and my fiancé bond with them  

I was pretty terrified that they'd try and get straight down so we blocked up all the hide spaces in our bedroom, took everything out that we could but they were much more interested in what we were doing ^^


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## Jackie (Jan 31, 2013)

Yes Cashew, I can barely type a message in this forum during playtime because a good amount of the time all three will be crawling on me.


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## Hero-wuff (Sep 27, 2012)

My rats used to get playtime on the bed only since i was too scared to let them run around the floor. The braver of the two would always make a 2ft leap from my bed to his cage when he got bored though so i eventually let them run wherever they like (in my room) and they will pop back onto the bed and see me whenever they feel like it. Scruffy, my most recent and youngest, comes back onto my shoulder for a mouth clean and then he's bounding off again.

It was nice having the closeness of them on the bed, but i find it more fun to see them running as fast as they can from one end of the room to the other.


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## JBird (May 23, 2013)

I wish I could let them come and go from the bed as they please! That would be a wonderful world, but they do pee on everything... I can't afford the risk if my apartment complex decides it smells like pee in my carpet! They stay on my bed, but one of my girls always hops onto my nightstand and then crawls under my bed, getting herself in some sort of trouble. I suppose I could just wait for her to come out (which I had to do last night when she found a way to take a field trip to the back of my closet!! My dresser is in there, and I couldn't reach her no matter how hard I tried!) but I get so concerned about her chewing or peeing on my stuff down there.
Regardless of Bambi's ridiculous antics, bed free range is my FAV! I stick their bed in the corner so they can't crawl down there/they have a place to go, and they always eventually fall asleep together right next to me... it's so sweet. They spend the rest of their time crawling all over me and coming into my lap for kisses & scritches. <3 So cute. And so much easier than setting up a pen on the floor!


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

It's about time to set our a litter box and get your rats used to it outside the cage. With Fuzzy Rat we had to go through bathroom training thrice once for inside (pee in your litter box) and once for inside (pee on the ground anywhere) and then once for inside again (litter box!). Rats really have an issue with different rules for different places. If you have a litter box in your cage, just bring it out with them and they will use it.


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## Voltage (May 15, 2013)

I let my rats free roam on my bed. At first it was just Toast and Arya for me and I didn't try free roaming til it was just Peanut Butter and Arya. (Toast had to go to the vet and we got Peanut Butter to keep Arya company in the three weeks Toast was gone) I'd mostly let Arya free roam on me bed and she LOVED climbing all over the place and hiding under the pillows, blankets and stuffed animals. She would always come and check in with me frequently and even attack me with little rat kisses and would leap on me. I trust her completely on the bed. She peers over the side once in awhile.
My bed is very low to the ground, it is just a box bed and a mattress. And then I have a box with stuff on it like papers and stuff that is almost the same height as the bed and is right up against it. I've never had any of my rats try to climb on it. Almost as though they know they aren't supposed to.
After I got Arya used to it I introduced Peanut Butter to the bed, she stress pooped a few times before she got used to it days later. And yesterday I introduced Cappuccino and Toast to the bed. I had all four rats on the bed since I had an extra pair of hands there to help me. We had no issues with them whatsoever. And Cappuccino is very new here. We just got her the day before yesterday. Same day we brought Toast back home. We let them get used to the cage the first day and let them play the next.
The only problem with bed free roaming is catching them when its time to put them back in the cage. Only Arya doesn't mind being picked up. The rest of them I can kinda wait til they crawl on me so I can just walk them over. But they are so slippery sometimes scooping them up can be a pain.


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## JBird (May 23, 2013)

Rat Daddy said:


> It's about time to set our a litter box and get your rats used to it outside the cage. With Fuzzy Rat we had to go through bathroom training thrice once for inside (pee in your litter box) and once for inside (pee on the ground anywhere) and then once for inside again (litter box!). Rats really have an issue with different rules for different places. If you have a litter box in your cage, just bring it out with them and they will use it.


Someone should tell my girls that other rats pee in their litter box like good kids  They do pee in it a lot, and are very good about their box I'd say 80-90% of the time, but I still do see poos & little puddles outside of the box. I like to think they just go more than that little box can handle. 

I bring the box out with them when they free range, every time! I bring that and/or their bed. They are used to crawling on it since it is familiar and often do use the box to poo, but pee while they walk very often. I barely notice it until I lean my hands in a bunch of tiny wet drops... It seems like they are marking; they walk over, smell, squat a bit and pee, then walk off (the few times I have seen them do that). Maybe it's just old habits.


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## Jackie (Jan 31, 2013)

I always feel like my girls are marking. They constantly pee outside of their cage. :/


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

Amelia is learning to pee outdoors. Her first thought seems to be to hold it and wait until I'm holding her and pee on me. Yesterday she did a couple of test pees in different places to see how I would react... First there was on me... not so good... then there was on the fence rail, better. Then there was strait down from the branch she was hanging on, I wasn't underneath so that went so well she finished and seemed a lot more relaxed. 

Indoors she's spending more time free ranging and I'm thinking she's peeing and pooping somewhere, I'll have to address that when I find out what's going on for sure. I'm guessing another litter box will help.

Fuzzy Rat pees on any black surface. She knows it's ok to pee on the street so when she's on my wife's black vinyl office chair... well that's black too and so is my phone, so I have to keep it covered when she's out on my desk.

It's strange what rats learn and how something so simple to us is quite the quandary for a rat.


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## Gannyaan (Dec 7, 2012)

Yay, sounds like Amelia is getting more outdoor time! Ill bet shes having fun. 


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

Gannyaan

Amelia is wrestling with the great outdoors as best she can.. Its a huge scary place for her... Yesterday she did about a dozen 50 feet dashes first across the bridge to get to the car and then under the bridge where she found a great big dark area to shelter in. We finally made a game of it I'd block her and she would try to find ways to trick me out of position and dash by me. She got really creative and in the contest I'm pretty sure she forgot what she was so panicked about in the first place. We sat on the dock overlooking the kill and she lay in my lap and bruxed and boggled for the first time while Fuzzy Rat napped and got her lumpy self stuck in the bench rails. Then Amelia got really brave and ran along the dock under the railings for at least a couple hundred feet until she ran into a South Asian family that seemed just a little surprised to cross paths with her and she jogged back to me and came up on hand... Amelia played with a couple of little girls and got herself carried around by them and seemed pretty happy about it. She likes little girls. And finally she wandered down a very long wooden fence, it was about 5 feet high and 4 inches wide and when she was over 100 feet from me something startled her and she started to run back, but rather than slow down as she approached she seemed somehow amazed with the speed she reached and dug in, folded her ears back to cut the wind resistance and tore it up like the devil was on her tail until she was only a blur with a tail and blew right past me. When she reached the end of the fence she clamped the fence between her hind feet as the front of her body launched into the air and pulled herself back and strolled back to me oddly satisfied. Honestly I've rarely seen anything move so fast and it was like Amelia never knew she could do it before that and really surprised herself. Today I took the rats to the big rocks down the road and Amelia got it into her head to dig a den under the rock, I just let her dig and in about 10 minutes her tail disappeared under the rock. I'm not sure if anyone has ever seen domestic rats dig like this before, but I always thought digging a den was hard work for rats... I just came to find out they can do it in less than half an hour. She seemed pretty happy with her den and wasn't so easy to retrieve when time came to go home she actually growled at my daughter when she reached into the new den. And once we recovered Amelia, Fuzzy Rat weebled in, well Fuzzy Rat was easy to get out with a treat.

Amelia is at a very dangerous stage, she's confident enough to move around on her own and jump down off of me but still easily spooked. She's starting to discover her rattie super powers like tree climbing, hyper rat speed, digging deep dens and her ability to map vast spaces in her mind. But she's still panicky and not very confident and breaking training as it suits her because she doesn't fully understand that her training is going to keep her from getting killed. We may take her back to the safe site later on this week for more work, but she's making progress of a sort. It's hard to believe she was the flowerpot rat that never came out of her cage or moved from my desk. She's over a pound now and a pretty big rat and she's blossoming into a real force of nature, I almost miss the little flowerpot girl. On the up side she hung out on my lap for nearly half an hour today and let herself be skritched. The new improved Amelia might just be a little more open to affection.

It's kind of hard to describe what rats are really capable of... you see them all cute and furry and lounging around your house or their cage and you sort of want to protect them. Then you see them pushing their limits, climbing, swimming, running, navigating and now tunneling and you start to see how this species managed to become the second most successful species on earth. With Fuzzy Rat it just all came natural, she just grew into it from a pup, but with Amelia, it's like she didn't even know she was a rat and is waking up from a dream.

As to keeping her diet we found she had a lollipop and a whole fried mozzarella stick hidden behind a file cabinet and the wife claims that mice have attacked her tater chip bags. Poor Fuzzy Rat can't escape her healthy diet because she's too disabled to steal food but Amelia has become a most adept sneak thief, hiding under stuff at bedtime and foraging the house at night for unguarded goodies. Fuzzy Rat is down an ounce, which is hopefully tumor mass as there isn't much rat left but Amelia's tumor might be a little bigger and with her thieving ways, she might be gaining weight. I'd like to hope that we can reverse the tumor growth with diet, but I realize it hasn't been done before. But at least it gives us something to try. Amelia is just coming into her own and Fuzzy Rat is so special to us it's hard to think that something as stupid and petty as mammary tumors should take these girls away from us. I always knew that our rats lead a dangerous life and I was prepared for them getting killed doing what they do. But mammary tumors.... really??? A rat learns to survive everything that the great big world can throw at her and thrive where few rats have gone before and she gets stupid tumors... it's like a cosmic joke. Yes, I have better and worse days over this too. Two days ago Fuzzy Rat played with the kids too and she walked several hundred feet mostly in short intervals, she made it to within 30 yards of the car leading us back home before she collapsed and asked for up on hand and had to be carried the rest of the way. Next time we'll be sure to park closer to the bridge. Still it was a very good day.


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## Cassiopeia (Jun 5, 2013)

Thanks for this advice! I was going to start bonding with them with the chair method I've heard of, but this sounds better, and more fun


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