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Phineas and Ferb the rats: Totes adorbs!
Dec. 26th, 2013 08:19 pmA few weeks ago, I bought my pet rats, Phineas and Ferb, a pair of Kong toys. If you're not familiar with Kong toys, they're these really neat things originally designed for dogs: they look like little snowmen, but they're hollow on the inside. What you do is you smear peanut butter on the inside (or some meat paste or something else), and then stuff it full of dry food (or something else), and then give the Kong to a dog. The dog will then spend a good amount of time working out how to get all of the delicious food out of the toy. It's great for intellectual stimulation :3b
Anyway, back to the rats. I bought a pair of the smallest size the pet store had that was not for puppies and brought them home. I'd tried a pair previously, and I'm pretty sure they were of the same size, when they were marketed as "small animal Kongs", but hadn't been too satisfied with the results. This time, I am overjoyed.
A big part of the reason for my change of heart is almost definitely that I found Oxbow adult rat food at the pet store in question. Not only is it basically the best commercial food available, it's the perfect size and shape to go into the mini-Kongs and give my boys something to work for. Larger blocks were no good, and wet food, which I'd been making myself when I bought my first pair of mini-Kongs, was simply no good from a cleaning perspective.
With the success of the mini-Kongs, I thought idly of getting some of the mega heavy-duty Kongs, for heavy-duty chewers (which rats, being rodents, definitely qualify as). They don't make Kongs out of their toughest material in their smallest size, or at least I didn't see any at the store, so I would have to get the next size up, which was also several dollars up apiece. I finally settled on getting a pair of them for Xmas - or rather, I got one and my mom got one for her "grandrats". We also each got them some treats. Mom bought them some strawberry yogurt drop treats.
Tonight, I treated myself to giving one yogurt drop to each rat, and then dropping a second drop in the bottom of each of the new, larger, heavy-duty Kongs, followed up by enough roasted peas to make it into the second chamber. Phineas and Ferb are having a tough time of getting at the delicious-smelling yogurt drops, but I believe my boys are up to the challenge ♥
Anyway, back to the rats. I bought a pair of the smallest size the pet store had that was not for puppies and brought them home. I'd tried a pair previously, and I'm pretty sure they were of the same size, when they were marketed as "small animal Kongs", but hadn't been too satisfied with the results. This time, I am overjoyed.
A big part of the reason for my change of heart is almost definitely that I found Oxbow adult rat food at the pet store in question. Not only is it basically the best commercial food available, it's the perfect size and shape to go into the mini-Kongs and give my boys something to work for. Larger blocks were no good, and wet food, which I'd been making myself when I bought my first pair of mini-Kongs, was simply no good from a cleaning perspective.
With the success of the mini-Kongs, I thought idly of getting some of the mega heavy-duty Kongs, for heavy-duty chewers (which rats, being rodents, definitely qualify as). They don't make Kongs out of their toughest material in their smallest size, or at least I didn't see any at the store, so I would have to get the next size up, which was also several dollars up apiece. I finally settled on getting a pair of them for Xmas - or rather, I got one and my mom got one for her "grandrats". We also each got them some treats. Mom bought them some strawberry yogurt drop treats.
Tonight, I treated myself to giving one yogurt drop to each rat, and then dropping a second drop in the bottom of each of the new, larger, heavy-duty Kongs, followed up by enough roasted peas to make it into the second chamber. Phineas and Ferb are having a tough time of getting at the delicious-smelling yogurt drops, but I believe my boys are up to the challenge ♥
