1600: Clover and Socks

As some of you will remember, we got a couple of new(er) rats a while back, initially to give Lucy Rat some company after her cagemate Lara died, and then to keep each other company when Lucy passed away not all that long afterwards.

It’s been interesting to get to know Clover and Socks since we’ve had them, as they have markedly different personalities to Lara and Lucy. While Lara was a lazy rat who enjoyed attention and Lucy was an energetic psychopath who also enjoyed attention, both Clover and Socks are much more reserved. Scared is perhaps the word, although it seems to be the strangest things that set them off — certain noises and certain sudden movements will send them bolting for the nearest piece of shelter, but with other things they’re absolutely fine.

I’m not sure if they’re actually proving more difficult to “socialise” than Lara and Lucy were, because in retrospect it was relatively late into both of their respective lives that they started coming out of the cage of their own volition, exploring, responding to stimuli and, indeed, doing absolutely anything for a prawn cracker or piece of lettuce. Socks and Clover, meanwhile, are both willing to come out and explore a bit — Sock in particular likes climbing up on top of the cage where she has a Lego house in which she can hide — but they’re not yet willing to be picked up or petted with any reliability. It’s a shame, but hopefully they’ll come around eventually.

They do both have very distinct personalities that they exhibit when they’re not running for shelter, however. Socks is curious, cheeky and keen to run around — both of them will run on the wheel we originally got for Lara and Lucy, but Socks does it with far more regularity — while Clover is a little more timid and careful about what she does for the most part. I say “for the most part” because there are times when she’ll skitter around the cage, dig a big hole for no apparent reason and then look out as if to say “…what?”

Rats are very interesting pets to have and, despite the fact they have a slight tendency to keep antisocial hours — Socks and Clover both tend to get up and be most active when Andie and I are going to bed — they’re good company. They’re not the same kind of pet as a dog or cat, of course — while those animals will happily wander around and come and see you when they damn well feel like it (although most dogs, in my experience, are attention whores even more than cats are), rats are a pet you have to actively engage with due to the fact that they’re — in most cases, anyway — not free to just roam around your house at will.

It’s kind of a shame that they’re not in some ways, as it’s fun to see them wandering around on the floor. And it was some “out of cage” time that gave me the fondest memory I think I have of Lara in particular: it was back when we lived in Chippenham, and we’d let them out for some reason — I forget exactly why, perhaps to clean them — and I was upstairs doing something on the computer. Suddenly, I felt something on my feet. Thinking it was just an itch or perhaps a fly or something, I moved my foot, but then looked down only to see Lara trundling around on the floor of my study; she’d climbed all the stairs in our Chippenham house — which must be like ascending a mountain for a rat — and come to see me, presumably by following my scent.

I miss Lara and Lucy, particularly as Socks and Clover are yet to come out of their shells enough to interact with us a great deal. But I’m sure we’ll become friends eventually, and then I’m sure we’ll have some fun, silly stories with them, too.