Our rat, Tomato is a big old boy. If the truth be known he is horrendously overweight. When out and about he tends to just drag himself along rather than walk. I’m not saying he’s lazy, he loves to come out and play and he even tries to bounce even though he finds it pretty tiring. Even so, he is a big guy and it takes a lot of effort for him to move. It is quite sad to see, as he is lovely and he obviously wants to join in with his brothers.
Worryingly his initial excitement at joining our family has dwindled and we are starting to have problems with him not moving much at play time. He has the added problem that because of his size and lack of muscle he can’t climb about in the cage, which is a huge part of a rats daily exercise. I have also noticed his brother Pickle, who isn’t overweight, doesn’t seem to have much muscle bulk, making me think they didn’t have much opportunity to climb and play.
In an attempt to cut down on the amount Tomato eats, and stop him eating just his favorite foods we thought we’d try some rat nuggets, to stop Tomato just eating his favourite foods. Unfortunately we opened the bag to find is was infested with moths! I don’t know what had happened there, it was the same brand as we feed our rabbits and we’ve never had a problem before. Needless to say it has put us off a bit and we’ve kept him on Reggie Rat – which we know and trust.
Even though getting Tomato to lose weight and stay active is proving a challenge we are not going to give up on him.
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