Rat-Ship Crazy - December 5, 2020
You know you have gone “rat-ship crazy” when – in addition to hunting for bargains at Food Basics – you are also on the quest for empty canned soup box “lids.” Or when you go to the garbage room of your apartment – not because you have any garbage – but because you are searching for a box the size of a small elephant.
Add to that, we now order items from Amazon and I cannot bear to throw out the containers. We have what could referred to as “a bounty of boxes” in our small two bedroom apartment. You see, I just never know when one might come in handy for grandson Jasper or for our ratlets.
Jasper – our Tuesday and Thursday guest and fellow ratlet lover
I intended to collect NUMEROUS dishwasher sized boxes so Laur could build a little city for Jasper. We only have one carton to date – used to make a house. But not any house. No, this one is equipped with a door, window, skylight, carpet, blanket, and flashlight. Laur is vetoing my plan to have a firehouse, hospital, and restaurant. “Jannie, we don’t have any room!” And he is correct. We have to move our ratlets’ apartment down the hall just to find a space for the house.
The Ratty Apartment – where the ratties live most of the time
Some boxes make for great dens for the ratties. Others – the soup box lids – make great litter boxes. If you stack them and connect them with holes and attach them with super glue (letting it dry completely), you can make a three or four story burrow for them to explore. I also have to have small boxes for them – just so they can rip them up. Chewing things is an Olympic sport for ratlets.
The Ratty Play Cage – also known as rat TV because we have fun watching their shenanigans
This is a multi level outfit – made from a couple of cages - with lots of different boxes, and a variety of different toys and textures. It’s to give their brains stimulation and to give me a hobby. They only spent about an hour a day in there. Still, to keep things interesting, I have to shuffle an array of boxes in and out of there. I have been known to dumpster dive to get shoeboxes. So much potential!
The Ratty Play Pen – in the future…
I continue to save large boxes from Amazon and from our apartment’s garbage room. I fold them up and stash them under my bed because I have plans of one day building a collapsible rat play-pen. This will require an additional box for the ratlet toys – which will be of a different variety. Likely odds and ends that I pick up at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. Oh the possibilities!
*****
All of this sounds silly until you are part of it. It is so much fun to watch Jasper load up his cardboard house like a pack rat. And then decide to pitch things out the door if they don’t quite fit with his agenda that day.
And the ratties? Today I gave them an orange juice carton and a soya milk carton – with an extra large hole cut into the side so that even Daisy Donut could explore them.
They get almost excited as I do. 😊
Add to that, we now order items from Amazon and I cannot bear to throw out the containers. We have what could referred to as “a bounty of boxes” in our small two bedroom apartment. You see, I just never know when one might come in handy for grandson Jasper or for our ratlets.
Jasper – our Tuesday and Thursday guest and fellow ratlet lover
I intended to collect NUMEROUS dishwasher sized boxes so Laur could build a little city for Jasper. We only have one carton to date – used to make a house. But not any house. No, this one is equipped with a door, window, skylight, carpet, blanket, and flashlight. Laur is vetoing my plan to have a firehouse, hospital, and restaurant. “Jannie, we don’t have any room!” And he is correct. We have to move our ratlets’ apartment down the hall just to find a space for the house.
The Ratty Apartment – where the ratties live most of the time
Some boxes make for great dens for the ratties. Others – the soup box lids – make great litter boxes. If you stack them and connect them with holes and attach them with super glue (letting it dry completely), you can make a three or four story burrow for them to explore. I also have to have small boxes for them – just so they can rip them up. Chewing things is an Olympic sport for ratlets.
The Ratty Play Cage – also known as rat TV because we have fun watching their shenanigans
This is a multi level outfit – made from a couple of cages - with lots of different boxes, and a variety of different toys and textures. It’s to give their brains stimulation and to give me a hobby. They only spent about an hour a day in there. Still, to keep things interesting, I have to shuffle an array of boxes in and out of there. I have been known to dumpster dive to get shoeboxes. So much potential!
The Ratty Play Pen – in the future…
I continue to save large boxes from Amazon and from our apartment’s garbage room. I fold them up and stash them under my bed because I have plans of one day building a collapsible rat play-pen. This will require an additional box for the ratlet toys – which will be of a different variety. Likely odds and ends that I pick up at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. Oh the possibilities!
*****
All of this sounds silly until you are part of it. It is so much fun to watch Jasper load up his cardboard house like a pack rat. And then decide to pitch things out the door if they don’t quite fit with his agenda that day.
And the ratties? Today I gave them an orange juice carton and a soya milk carton – with an extra large hole cut into the side so that even Daisy Donut could explore them.
They get almost excited as I do. 😊