Heathcliffe: Spongerat.
Heathcliffe opens his stubby arms out to you like a spongy baby doll when you pick him up. He never resists, or does that passive aggressive liquid-rat thing to slip through your hands. He prefers to be held flat against your shoulder and have his back rubbed up and down, as opposed to the same direction as the hair. You can just move his saggy old skin back and forth without ever lifting your hand, and he loves that too. The bruxing starts as soon as you start to lift him. He is either such a traitor--or absolutely shameless-- that he will spongerat for every visitor to the house.
That's a first for my rats, but he does another thing I've seen in a couple of others, and only for me ... when I hold him up to my face and talk to him, he makes licking and chewing motions with his mouth, like horses do when they're content, or guinea pigs do all the time. It looks like they're trying to talk, and it seems Heathcliffe does this only when I talk directly to him. Some cats will literally talk back to you, but it is so weird to see rats do this.
Heathcliffe opens his stubby arms out to you like a spongy baby doll when you pick him up. He never resists, or does that passive aggressive liquid-rat thing to slip through your hands. He prefers to be held flat against your shoulder and have his back rubbed up and down, as opposed to the same direction as the hair. You can just move his saggy old skin back and forth without ever lifting your hand, and he loves that too. The bruxing starts as soon as you start to lift him. He is either such a traitor--or absolutely shameless-- that he will spongerat for every visitor to the house.
That's a first for my rats, but he does another thing I've seen in a couple of others, and only for me ... when I hold him up to my face and talk to him, he makes licking and chewing motions with his mouth, like horses do when they're content, or guinea pigs do all the time. It looks like they're trying to talk, and it seems Heathcliffe does this only when I talk directly to him. Some cats will literally talk back to you, but it is so weird to see rats do this.