Monk, my first rat, is sick. I was starting to clean cages today and found him quite ill. He was sharing a cage with his son, Solja, and Solja seems fine. Monk is thinner than normal and he just seems scraggly. With all the stress in the house lately (roommate issues) I haven't been paying a lot of attention to the rats. Go in, feed and water, get out and go to bed. I finally had a day to myself today that I could get down and clean cages and handle everyone. I have removed him from the cage for now. I have put him in a small bucket (I don't have any extra cages and he's making no effort to climb out) and have him next to me as I type. He has no interest in water, so I'm giving him water by dropper/syringe type thing. He is also eating on his own. I have given him lab block, puffed rice, cornflakes, and oats to munch on.

So a short list of his symptoms:
- head tilt
- loss of balance
- thin
- uninterested in water

We also have another rat that we really don't know what to do with. He was housed with Solja weeks ago and started to show signs of getting sick (sneezing) so we moved him to his own enclosure to see if he could get over it by himself. He got over his cold (stopped sneezing) but now he has gone crazy.

List of symptoms:
- waving his head around
- acting jittery (like he's hopped up on caffeine)

Any thoughts? I can't get Monk to the vet today (closed) but I'm going to try and get him an appointment tomorrow if I can. I'm going to see if he shows any improvement over the night as I am going to stay up with him and be his "nurse". I think the head tilt probably signals a need for the vet.

The other rat was going to be used as a breeder but he is obviously a very very sick rat. I have no interest in keeping him as a breeder and I am not attached to him at all. He was actually bought as a feeder but we had bought one too many and we kept him. I do not feel comfortable feeding him to a snake since I do not feed sick animals to my snakes.