Do you play games with your pet?

What are fun (and clean) games to play with pet rats?

• Does anyone have any suggestions for fun ways to play with pet rats? Any chewable household found items? Or ideas for toys or homemade gyms? And if possible, how do you play with ...show more

• Answer:

  Chase: My rats enjoy a good game of chase and pounce. It involves taking a pencil, ribbon or similar object and wiggling it around til it catches thier eye, then once they try to go for it keep dragging it along the ground. My rats will chase the end of the pencil all over the room. This also works with trailing shoelaces. My rats chase me all over the house endlessly if my shoes are untied. I've had up to 7 rats at a time following one string. It's really cute to see. Another thing they like is having a thread spool, film can , etc. (they seem to prefer cylindrical objects for some reason) rolled across the floor. They will run after it attack it and scamper off. It only keeps thier interest if it is moving however and only girls seem to enjoy playing these games. Boys are more simple minded I guess and really just enjoy being tickled. Wind game: They love to have someone blow air gently in their faces. They were fascinated by a gentle stream or intermittent puffs. Swaying their heads, they would get closer and closer to us, then try and investigate our mouths, the source of the air. They never got tired of this game, although we sometimes got tired of playing it with them and never let them find the secret source inside our mouths ("Off limits, girls!"). Tag, Flipping, and Wrestling: Tag, flipping, wrestling are good games because they're all in the range of normal rattie behavior. If you watch them playfight, they chase each other, the one who runs will decide to turn the tables and become the "attacker" all of a sudden, etc. What you can try is to tickle your rat on his/her "rump", just above the tail, then remove your hand, do it again, or when he looks back at his rump, tickle him under the chin. Use a finger or two and poke him a little! You should get a response if your rat is tame enough, if he's still new and unused to you, he'll probably look at you like he wants no part of it, he'll come around to wrestling soon enough though. I started out with one rat and she decided she wanted to fight my finger when she was very very tiny, it was really funny, she gave me little "bites" too. The Ribbon Game: One of our rats likes the ribbon game. We dangle a hair ribbon into her cage and she grabs and pulls on it. Sometimes we pull back on it for tug-o-war and sometimes we let her pull it most of the way into the cage, then catch the end before it goes in. We put the new end into the cage, so she pulls that in, and then we catch the other end, etc. The funniest part is when she's pulling on one end and standing on the other and can't figure out why the ribbon won't budge. Poke: It is fun to poke the rats from under a blanket that they are walking on. Coin Wrapper Surprise!: My ratties LOVE to play "Coin Wrapper Surprise." I take a paper coin wrapper of any size (the bigger the better, however) and stuff bread or raw pasta in it, close one end all the way, close the other end very loosely or not at all, throw it to my ratties and they GO NUTS trying to grab it and open it and carry it around and steal it from whoever has it already and, well, it goes on for ages until all the stuffed-in food comes out and they have a ratty feast! I hope this helps! Have fun!