Meet Yoshitoki :)

My cat caught him a week ago so I've been feeding him with an eye dropper. He's grown quite a lot in that time! First pic was taken on April 24th and the last pic was taken yesterday

Niklovesrats · May 1, 2017

Aww wow.... how cute is he!!! Not very old either!!

MightyMax · May 1, 2017

He's lovely

Omi · May 1, 2017

He's adorable, William

William · May 2, 2017

Niklovesrats said:
Aww wow.... how cute is he!!! Not very old either!!

Yeah I think he was only about 2 weeks old when I first got him! It's been awesome raising him, he's very sweet <3

Jack's-Jane · May 2, 2017

I can look at him front on and he has a cute little face, but I just cant cope with Rat's tails !!

They terrify me

William · May 2, 2017

Jack's-Jane said:
I can look at him front on and he has a cute little face, but I just cant cope with Rat's tails !! They terrify me

I actually thought of you when I was going through my pictures figuring out which ones to post :lol: I was like wow there's actually a lot of pics where you can't even see his tail (which makes him look like baby hamsters I've had!), Jane will like those :lol:

What really surprised me about him is how silky soft his tail is - I've had/have 2 other roof rats and can't remember their tails ever feeling like this!

MimzMum · May 2, 2017

That's a cute name for him.

Adorable when young, yes. But we had a roof rat in our new home for a few weeks around Christmas/New Year's and if the noise it made was any indication, it was anything but wee.

I was not thrilled and my dog was even less so. Every time we heard it scratch she was up and barking like a maniac.

Fortunately it saw fit to quit the premises. My ex insisted I put traps up in the attic because this is his place and he'd have been furious if we allowed the rat to stay up there, not to mention the damage it could cause. But we never put them up (my son was supposed to handle it) and about a week after I bought the things we never heard another peep out of it.

There are quite a few raptors in the trees across the street...hawks I'm guessing...they probably took it off the roof when it came out for a wander. :shock:

I was told by our exterminator, who came to give an extortionate estimate for removal, that cats don't catch rats, especially roof rats. I found that a bit hard to believe. :?

William · May 2, 2017

MimzMum said:
That's a cute name for him.

Adorable when young, yes. But we had a roof rat in our new home for a few weeks around Christmas/New Year's and if the noise it made was any indication, it was anything but wee. I was not thrilled and my dog was even less so. Every time we heard it scratch she was up and barking like a maniac.

Fortunately it saw fit to quit the premises. My ex insisted I put traps up in the attic because this is his place and he'd have been furious if we allowed the rat to stay up there, not to mention the damage it could cause. But we never put them up (my son was supposed to handle it) and about a week after I bought the things we never heard another peep out of it.

There are quite a few raptors in the trees across the street...hawks I'm guessing...they probably took it off the roof when it came out for a wander. :shock:

I was told by our exterminator, who came to give an extortionate estimate for removal, that cats don't catch rats, especially roof rats. I found that a bit hard to believe. :?

I've got a Japanese theme with rats... Nezumi (roof rat, rip), Kichiro (16 month old roof), Miyoko (16 month old domestic norway), and now Yoshitoki :lol:

We've got too many roof rats in our yard currently (need to move the playhouse I think) and it's a wonder really because we've got an insane amount of owls and hawks! And quite a few cats too (our Zeus, and then sometimes neighbors/ferals/strays). Thankfully none in the attic but we're always afraid of that happening at some point. We had rats in the attic at our old house and I can remember the scratching!

Cats do catch them though - the amount of times we've had to rescue them from cats, or our cats have left us a dead one...way too many to count. It's weird though, sometimes Zeus will just watch them steal his food, and other times he'll go hunt them. He just gets in a mood to go on a killing spree, I guess. That's how we knew to rescue Yoshitoki, because my mom said just watch he's in a funny mood, he's gonna go get another baby (sadly he fatally injured Yoshi's sister) so we'd better keep an eye out.

I think cats would much rather go after roofs than wild norway rats, actually. Norways are really fierce and do 'fight or flight'. Roofs are likely more to do 'hide or flight', they would only fight if they had no other options. That's because norways can pack a lot of strength behind their bite and roofs just don't have that strength, so they know they're likely to lose a fight with a predator. Roofs' strength is speed and agility. So cats probably have some difficulty catching them, especially since they spend a large part of their life above ground, up in the trees and rooftops.

When our cats catch roofs they normally catch babies (like 3 week - 10 week olds) because the babies are super bold, they don't really seem to understand what threats are. Or maybe they do and they know me and my family aren't a threat lol. But they do get slightly more wary as full grown adults and yet still unbelievably bold! They're so funny and cute, even when they're being annoying I have to give that to them!

MimzMum · May 3, 2017

That's very interesting William. Thank you for that info. My daughter was actually terrified that we had a rat in the house (only voles up in Alaska...no big) and she'd heard it scuttle over the stove and the dog went nuts. So she was very upset that it had found a way in. But we only ever heard it in the roof for about 2 weeks after that, and I know my neighbor puts out poison for them. They're apparently a huge problem here lately and exterminators are doing a booming business.

I can reassure her then that Mr. Squeaky is probably long gone. Kitty didn't get him though or I'd have found evidence of that all over the kitchen floor. :mrgreen: She is not a gentle hunter.

I think we do have the capacity to have Norways here...but as far as I know that is not what was inhabiting our attic. I've looked at the scat photos online and I think the exterminator would've definitely raised a flag if he'd thought we had Norway rats. (I.E. price for removal would've been astronomical.)

William · May 6, 2017

MimzMum said:
That's very interesting William. Thank you for that info. My daughter was actually terrified that we had a rat in the house (only voles up in Alaska...no big) and she'd heard it scuttle over the stove and the dog went nuts. So she was very upset that it had found a way in. But we only ever heard it in the roof for about 2 weeks after that, and I know my neighbor puts out poison for them. They're apparently a huge problem here lately and exterminators are doing a booming business.

I can reassure her then that Mr. Squeaky is probably long gone. Kitty didn't get him though or I'd have found evidence of that all over the kitchen floor. :mrgreen: She is not a gentle hunter.

I think we do have the capacity to have Norways here...but as far as I know that is not what was inhabiting our attic. I've looked at the scat photos online and I think the exterminator would've definitely raised a flag if he'd thought we had Norway rats. (I.E. price for removal would've been astronomical.)

Good thing you guys discovered him before he was able to make a family lol. They have a range of like 200-400ft so there's likely some groups of them living nearby and he just came in to find food.

Roofs do well in the heat, they don't cope with the cold too well, so they're the predominant rat in the southeast and Pacific coast I believe with some small pockets of them in other parts of the country. Here in Florida I've heard norways are actually a rarity! Which is fine by me – I much prefer roofs (though they are a serious pest when it comes to fruit damage, apparently, so most don't share this view). Except as pets I love roofs and domestic norways equally! They're apples to oranges really.

I just adore Yoshi, he trusts me so much, to the point I have to stop him from doing things like licking my lips and trying to stick his face in my mouth (what is it with rats and their obsession with our mouths?!) and climbing up my face which I imagine will hurt a lot when he's bigger (especially since I'm allergic to rat's nails!) so I'm nipping that in the bud now! :lol:

He treats me as like the safe place in tag also, so whenever he's startled or wary when exploring something new he'll run back to me, it's so adorable. And I'm encouraging this behavior as well by offering my hand and making a small clicking noise with my mouth, this way if he gets scared one day and hides I can get him to come out to me if he's used to this.

Every single day he's grown just a little bit more (I'll have to update the thread later with more recent pics!) and is learning new things everyday and he's so playful and adventurous, it's so cute. Yesterday he was fascinated by my duck's water bowl and took a swim in it sort of by accident on purpose, then he hopped out and was jumping around like a grasshopper lol. Apparently it was not what he was expecting :lol:

He's still not weaned but I guess he's a bit too young for that anyway. I do hope he'll try a bigger variety of solids soon though..he's quite picky,, possibly because he doesn't have his mom/siblings to learn from when it comes to what's safe to eat. It sort of concerns me that he might be getting too much protein or something since the bulk of his diet is kitten formula and porridge oats. But he is a growing baby so hopefully not!

Meet Yoshitoki :)

William

Wise Old Thumper

Rhianna

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William

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Niklovesrats

Warren Scout

MightyMax

Banned

Omi

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William

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Jack's-Jane

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William

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MimzMum

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William

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MimzMum

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William

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