It is so cold today! Hope everyone’s animals are staying warm. I’m taking some… interesting approaches to keeping the rat cage warm.
It’s a little hard to explain my weird methods so I made pictures!
The first part is covering the sides of the cage. I know extra-eager chewers will pull *anything* into the cage and shred it. So, I made pseudo-curtains that hang a few inches away from the cage.
I’m using a big blanket or a few yards of fabric and clipping the short edge to a dowel or piece of bamboo. I did snap a few dowels so I ended up using 1/2″ rods of bamboo you can get at the hardware store and they are so. much. stronger! Binder clips work great for this.
Then, I have magnetic hooks that go on the cage to hold the “curtain rod”. If you use hefty blankets, you’ll probably have to use the heavy-duty magnets, instead of the cheap ones.
Like I said, the chewers will pull everything into the cage, so I have to put something between the cage and the bottom edge of the fabric.
The second part is covering the top of the cage. It’s unusual, but it works.
I’m using… baking trays! Pretty much anything wood, fabric, or plastic gets chewed up and makes a mess. So the only choice was metal. And it works great! They don’t chew it at all.
Also, I have a lot of hammocks at the very top of the cage, and the metal reflects heat back into where the nuggets are sleeping. And since it’s such a solid surface, I can put a microwavable heating pad on top for extra warmth — as long as I make sure the edges don’t extend outside the baking trays.
My actual setup shown in the diagram is kind of a hot mess because this is me being cheap due to, ugh, vet bills.
Half of it is a XXL baking tray I got on clearance because it was dinged.
The other half is an old baking tray + pizza stone combo.
It was the world’s worst pizza stone, so I now use it as a cage cover. It doesn’t work well as the metal in terms of reflecting heat, but it is a solid cover. Occasionally, I warm up the stone (but you have to do it VERY CAREFULLY because heat safety and all that).
The nuggets and I are still here. We haven’t posted because I got really sick — and then the holidays hit us.
We had ups and downs this year, as you know. We lost Kinoko, Barnaby, and Mama Juno. But Petra, Vesta, Pocket, and Mona are little whippersnappers who are still with us, and they will make the most of 2019.
Thank you to everyone who supported my little gang of rescue fuzz-butts. I appreciate it and think of it often. I love this community of rat/rodent/pet people. :)
I’ve been reading people’s reactions to the new changes. My first thoughts: I make posts about cute, fuzzy animals; so most likely this won’t apply to me. Although, it sounds like they’ll be using algorithms/bots, which means they will make mistakes.
Like, there was one time, I posted a video of my two boy rats resting on my forearm eating an apple held in my hands. Their then-algorithm flagged it as adult content and after two weeks, they were STILL reviewing it. I finally just posted it to Instagram, and then to Tumblr as Instagram content — and no flags!
Anyway, I just looked and a couple of my posts *are* flagged. They are videos of rats grooming humans or pics of a rat pile. It makes me chuckle that this can be misconstrued as too sexy or “unsafe” for minors, but I know this change is site-wide and it will affect a lot of people, so it is no laughing matter.
I’m sorry to those of you who are affected!
Even though this is a rat account, it’s actually my main account, so I follow A LOT of different people, and get to read so much amazing, fascinating, funny, sexy, and insightful content from smart, creative, and lovely people — of all ages, with varying interests, and all kinds of gender/sexuality expressions.
I really hate to see these voices get policed on this platform. After this, my Tumblr experience will probably not be the same anymore. If people decide to leave, I totally get it.
I think I will stay and see what happens, though. I’ve been on Tumblr for a looong time, have been through several transitions, but still haven’t found another platform that checks the boxes for me. (Suggestions are welcome!!)
Here on Tumblr, I like that there’s a combo of post types + community. So, basically you can have pics/gifs AND long posts, as well as follows and reblogs. Sometimes I have a lot to say about rats (too long for IG), and sometimes someone else has a helpful post that I want reblog in case it helps my followers too (harder to do on WordPress).
tl;dr: I will remain on Tumblr, for now.
If you do take off, I will miss your presence.
Even though none are as rat-filled and informational as my Tumblr… I mean, it’s hard to top a 10-year record of rat medical issues and cute pics!), I have a smaller presence in these other places:
Sketch for a four-nugget card to send out. I want to carve it out of linoleum and make prints (possibly a multi-block print!) — but it’s too detailed??
I’ll noodle on this to try to get unstuck…
I hate the faces right now, but the four-blossom flower is the design I had in my head.
This is just a digital mockup of how I’ll separate the colors when I carve the linoleum blocks, and it looks like I’ll have to carve THREE whole separate blocks!
I’ll keep working on it, and we’ll see how this turns out.
Sketch for a four-nugget card to send out. I want to carve it out of linoleum and make prints (possibly a multi-block print!) — but it’s too detailed??
I’ll noodle on this to try to get unstuck…
I hate the faces right now, but the four-blossom flower is the design I had in my head.
This is just a digital mockup of how I’ll separate the colors when I carve the linoleum blocks, and it looks like I’ll have to carve THREE whole separate blocks!
I’ll keep working on it, and we’ll see how this turns out.
Sketch for a four-nugget card to send out. I want to carve it out of linoleum and make prints (possibly a multi-block print!) — but it’s too detailed??
