Housing
The cage should be at least 2 feet wide and a foot deep. It needs to be high enough to allow a fully the rat to stand on its hind legs and still have a fair distance between its nose and the top of the cage. For a big male, this could mean at least 2 feet high. It needs to be large enough to house all your ratties’ toys without being cramped, and have no sharp edges, as young rats enjoy mock fighting during which they run and jump and tumble over one another.

The cage must be secure, as rats are excellent escape artists, and to protect your rats from other pets. Avoid wire mesh flooring, as this causes calluses on the rat’s feet which can become painful. A running, playing rat could get a foot stuck in the holes in the mesh and easily break a limb. A good flooring is pine panelling from a DIY store. It is cheap, it can be cut to size, already has slots for fitting the panels together. Cover it with the clear self-adhesive plastic used to cover books in schools for a hygienic, wipe clean surface.

Beding
Your rats will appreciate a shoe-box sized box to make a bed in. Cardboard boxes are cheap, but need replacing regularly as they will become soggy, and your rats will chew them. A durable, easy to clean plastic bed from the pet shop is ideal. Make sure it’s fairly dark plastic. Rats like to sleep when it’s light and rats with red eyes often find bright lights distressing. Sawdust makes an excellent substrate for the cage, it is absorbent and prevents droppings decomposing by drying them out. Make sure it’s sawdust from the petshop which has been dust extracted, not sawdust from your dad’s shed. Sterilised, shredded paper bedding is available which is safe and comfy. Don’t use newspaper as rats chew everything and newsprint is toxic.

Food
Many propriety rodent mixes are available which contain all that your rats need, but your rats won’t eat everything in the mix, so it’s important to give them some extras. Give them treats. They’ll eat just about anything. Don’t give them too much high-protein foods like meat, peanuts and sunflower seeds, as they have a limited capacity for metabolising amino acids. Excess amino acids in their blood makes their skin feel terribly itchy, and they’ll scratch at it until their hair drops off and they develop sores. Give them fruits, raw vegetables, cheese - they love pizza!, almost anything you eat you can share with them and will supplement their diet. There are a few things you must not give to rats. Don’t give them anything spicy, no curries, no chilli sauce, so make sure you’ve cleared up the left over takeaways before you let them out. Citrus fruits are too acidic for their stomachs to deal with, and garlic can kill them too. Otherwise, they can be fed anything. You’ll quickly find out what your rat’s favourites are, mine come running to the side of the cage just on the mention of the word “peanut”. Regulate their food intake. Rats have a sweet tooth and are greedy. They’ll get very fat very quickly if you let them eat all the pizza they want.

Before you buy
Taming and ratproofing