Hello, yall. My name is Paddy O’Ratty and I live in Cranberry’s bedroom. I’m a German-speaking vegetarian lesbian Quaker rat, so I am special (but I don’t play whistle, unfortunately. I prefer basoon.). Cranberry tortures me by making me wear tacky homemade green paper ribbons for St. Patrick’s Day.
Ignore the scabs on Cran’s hand. It’s scabies, it is. Also ignore the ugly bamboo curtains. Cran has no taste. :roll:
I hate it when he puts me up high on his bookshelf like this. The lighting is better there, he says, but it scaaaares me, being up so high. I’m just a poor little rat.
Yay, he finally put me back in my cage and took the ugly ribbon off my back! I love my taxicab, even though it’s falling apart. I also apparently love to sniff the air, because I do that all the time. Ich bin niedlich, oder?
Nice to meet you, Paddy. A handsome wee fellow you are! I wish my rat friends, Romeo and Juliet, were still around to meet you… I’m sure you all would have gotten along famously. Tell Cran hi, and to take good care of you!
Heh…her name isn’t really Paddy, but she doesn’t care if I change it to that for today (but she really is a vegetarian). I haven’t had rats in forever, but I know if they’re female they’re prone to certain tumors. She’s still young, so I’m thinking about getting her spayed, but I’ve always not felt right about putting such tiny animals under.
Yep. Most or all rats in the pet world have ancestors who were lab animals, and lab animals are bred to develop specific cancers because they are used for drug testing and such. The developing of cancer is bred into their genes, and it is terribly difficult to get out, so even 5000+ generations removed from the original lab rat, one still sees fatal tumors crop up in ratties. Getting your rats fixed decreases this risk because the reproductive organs are one of the places a rat develops cancer.
Having female rats spayed when young reduces the incidence of mammary tumors from 50% to 4% and pituitary tumors from 16% to 4%. The best time to spay a rat is between 3-6 months, with the earlier the better. Unlike dogs, who must be spayed before their first heat cycle for the full benefit of breast cancer prevention, spaying rats even up to one year of age still gives the full benefit for mammary tumor prevention. (It would be very difficult to spay a rat before her first heat because they can come in heat as early as 5 weeks of age!) For full protection from pituitary tumors, a rat should be spayed before 6 months.
A rat spay is similar to a cat spay, but with special attention to anesthesia, body temperature control, and analgesia. Only gas anesthetic should be used on rats. Injectable anesthetics cannot be controlled carefully enough. For the same reason, extreme caution must be used with pre-anesthetics. The only pre-med recommended is buprenorphine. Other analgesics should only be given after the patient recovers from the anesthetic, otherwise there is an increased risk of death. The patient must be kept warm during and after the surgery. Rats physically can’t vomit, so there is no need to withhold food and water before the surgery, and because the rat’s metabolism is so fast, doing so can compromise recovery.
Treating Cancerous Mammary Tumors
Cancerous mammary tumors most commonly occur in the groin area and the tumors usually appear dark. The vast majority of mammary tumors are benign. Surgery is not an effective treatment for cancerous mammary tumors. Fortunately there is an effective treatment: tamoxifen. Tamoxifen works in rats by blocking the estrogen receptor sites in the tissue. It can shrink the tumors or slow their growth for many months. The recommended dose is 3 mg/lb once a day for the rest of the rat’s life.
Rat Neuters
Neutering a male rat does not provide any significant health benefits, but it will reduce urine marking behavior, atypical aggression, and normal secondary sexual characteristics such as rougher coat and heavy oil production from the skin on the back.
Rats have an open inguinal canal, which allows free passage of the testicles from the scrotum up into the abdomen and back. This makes a rat neuter more complex than a dog or cat neuter. Common complications after a neuter include scrotal abscesses, either from infections or a reaction to the sutures. To avoid this, a rat neuter can be performed like a spay, with a midline abdominal incision. To assist finding the large testicles, they can be pushed up into the abdomen externally before the patient is draped. Even after draping, the testicles are large enough to be felt through the drape and pushed further forward toward the incision if necessary. Doing the neuter this way avoids the sensitive scrotum and the need to ligate or suture the tunica separately from the scrotal skin.
After a rat is spayed or neutered, most patients experience abdominal cramping so pain relief is imperative, and sometimes necessary up to 3 days later with neuters.
I love her. One of my teens is bothering me to get rats, and I must stick to my guns because we have more pets around than we need at the moment. But I do like them.
Not ringworm. As a vet tech I was the best diagnostic tool the Drs had for that. If an animal came in the office with it, I did not even have to touch the critter, I’d get ringworm before the Drs culture would grow!
Cran, I did anesthesia on a rat presented for tumor removal. It required getting out the books to be sure we did the anesthesia right but the surgery went fine. If spaying will improve her odds then I’d go for it. That surgery certainly improves female dogs odds of a healthy long life span if done ideally before their first heat so I can see where it would be beneficial to rats too.
