Should I Let My Rat Run Around My Room?

Fancy pet rats are curious animals and love to explore any space you may leave them into. Playtime outside rat cages for pet rats is very important for them and they enjoy it a lot too. 

However, most responsible pet rat parents get confused, whether to let their pet rat play around in their room or not? The answer is YES. Playing in a free and open large space will help your pet rats to explore everything and stimulate their curious brains as well. The room needs to be rat-proof and the pet rats’ activities should always be carefully supervised during their playtime. 

It is solely our responsibility to make the room and a living space safe and healthy for our fur babies to play freely. 

This writeup below will discuss all the important steps and precautions that are gonna resolve all your doubts and will help you to organize the place for your little rodent pets to run around in our room without any interruption.

How To Protect Your Pet Rat While They Run Around Your Room Freely?

The sole most important thing to keep in mind while you let your pet rats run around freely in your room is a safe environment. Rats are small in size and can get into any open space they encounter. 

Small openings, little sharp wiring or keen items, cable wires, and cords can indeed be dangerous for them. Their chewing habits can also end up damaging our electronic devices, furniture, and clothes. Also, calling your pet rat babies back after they are done playing or finding them again to put back into the cage is another task.

These subtle chores for our little pets can be extremely daunting tasks for responsible pet parents. Whether to leave the rats to play around in the room is thus indeed a difficult decision to make. 

Here are few important tips to note before you decide to let loose your pet rats inside your room:

• Electrical cords and wires: Rats, in general, have a habit of chewing onto anything and almost everything. Cable cords, rubber items, plastic bottles, slippers, clothes, newspapers, cable wires, cords, and any other soft item are easily chewable and rats love all of it. Keep all electrical wirings, cords, and other above-mentioned products and accessories away from the sight and reach of your pet fur babies. 

• Window curtains, stringy blinds, and blankets: Similar to cats, pet fancy rats love to keep themselves groomed and clean all the time. Rats also love to play with stringy clothes, wool balls, and carpet holes matching their cat nature behavior. It is crucial to limit a rat’s access to such stringy items and clothes. Your rat babies may trap themselves in the stingy loop and get choked. 

• Holes and cracks in walls, furniture, electronics: Wall cracks, furniture holes, sliding windows, cabinets, drawers, collapsible grill gates, kitchen drawers, refrigerators, electrical cabinets, and holes are highly risky areas for your rat babies. While allowing your pet rat to run around free in your living space, make sure to close any small openings or holes to stop any possible injury for your furry rat friends. 

• Toilet drainage: Another problem area we should limit access to for our little rat pets is the toilet. Drainage holes, toilet bowls, sinkholes are big enough without the lid to allow any rodent pet to pass through them. If your rats are curious and have access to such a kitchen or toilet area drainage system, they may end up jumping or getting inside of these holes. It is better to keep the lids on or have closed doors to the kitchen and toilet to limit their access to these spaces. 

• Dustbins: Rats love to explore dustbins and garbage bags. The smell of thrown-away food and other items is very attractive to them. But, access to open dustbins is risky as they may end up chewing or eating harmful things or food and develop deadly diseases.

Precautions to Save Pet Rats from Obvious Dangers:

These obvious dangers can be easily avoided to allow pet rats a safe environment to run around. Brain stimulation is a crucial factor for rats as they are extremely smart rodent pets. Here are some basic precautions that a rat parent can use to cope with the above-mentioned safety challenges.

• Use hard cardboard pieces and shavings to fill up gaps in wooden holes and furniture. This will stop your little pet rats from digging into unwanted spaces and get trapped inside. 
• Unplug all electrical cords and wires to avoid any short circuit or electric shocks for your rats. You can also cover the cable wires with a thick plastic coating to limit their chewing ability. Pile up all small wires, mobile/laptop chargers and keep them safe inside drawers that are away from your pet’s reach. 
• Keep all doors and sliding windows closed when your rat is out playing in your room all around. Wire meshes are also helpful in keeping your rats inside, limiting their movement outside window panes. 
• Close off all doors and windows to the bathroom and kitchen to limit your rat’s movement to any drainage holes and toilet bowls. 
• Keep away stringy items and fringes of clothes, bags, carpets, and blankets. You may engage your rats in playing with these stringy items if you are inside the room, playing and having a keen eye on your fur babies. 

The small size of rats makes these free playing inside the room or playground a little bit tricky. It required added efforts and close observation to keep these little pet babies safe in a healthy rat-proof room or living environment. 

These simple precautions from pet rat parents will enable further safety measures and make free playing and running around easy and safe. 

Things You Can Add To Make The Room More Rat Friendly

Here are some items and rat-friendly things and techniques you can add to your room and routine to make it more rat-friendly. 

• Climbers: Rats love to climb on higher alters in the room or on the shelves and cupboards. Jumping around, getting inside the small holes, climbing on top of rods are absolute favorites to our fur babies. Adding climbers made up of non-toxic plastic, wood or steel are great options. You can also be creative to hand slips, soft cloth toys along the climbers to make it more fun.

• Chewers: Chewing on items is something that all cats, rats, and dogs love to do. Especially during the growing years of these fur babies, they love to sharpen teeth by chewing or biting on the soft stuff. Newspapers and other toxic items are usually harmful. Instead, use pet-friendly chewing items available in the pet store to help your rats sharpen their teeth.

• Ample food and water: Make sure your rats are left with ample food and water as they do not feel the need to search and chew on unnecessary items in the room for food. Give them healthy fruits, veggies, and ample clean drinking water as they play and cuddle with you.

• Rat-friendly toys: Many rat-friendly toys are easily available online exploring and in local pet shops. Just like babies, your pet rodents will love soft fluffy toys. Introduce them to balls, soft toy rats, cheesecakes, or anything to match their personality. These little things will make their playtime more fun and free. Their cute acts can also destress you from all the daily grind and hustle of lives. 

• Hand moves: Use your hands to nudge them and play along with their moves. Direct human contact and interaction will make rats more comfortable with human closeness and companionship. As responsible pet rat parents, you can also train them to move around in the house safely. Teach them certain signals using your hands and these smart rat pets will learn all of it without much hassle.

Importance Of Letting Rats Run Around In Your Room

No animal can ever stay locked in a closed cage for months and years. Every animal needs space and ample free area to play around just as they would do in a natural habitat. 

Rats are very smart and curious animals. They need constant companionship, playtime, free big space, and mind stimulators to explore and be their natural selves. Keeping pet rats locked in the cage can create stress and make these babies sick and depressed in the long run. 

As pet parents, we should let our rat babies move and run around freely. These free play time have added benefits that human parents must know to understand their pets better. 

• Brain stimulation: Running around everywhere freely and exploring almost every other item, helps rat brains stimulate with interest and fun. You can introduce the small fur babies to toys that will also help feed their curious minds with much-needed activities. 

• Deepen bonding: Fun playtime with human parents and other cage mates helps rats bond deeply. Rats are happy animals, they enjoy human companionship and also love unconditionally. Deep bonds and friendships help them trust their human parents. This habit of bonding makes the experience of pet rat parenting more worthy and beautiful.

• Keep them happy: Anything stressful or a trapped environment is unhealthy for the overall lifestyle of pets. Playing with your pets, giving them love, care and affection will keep these little buddies to get happy and blooming during their entire lives. 

• Health check: A happy healthy life where all animals and humans can live freely is a dream to many. Rats are our little pets, they do not deserve a life trapped inside the cage all day long. Leaving them free to run around in the house or a big spacious room, will destress them and make them feel at natural habitat. Exploring, marking territories, attracting female rats to mate are all-natural processes of their existence. Allowing them to exist naturally without limiting their lives, will add up to their health. 

• The feeling of home: As I mentioned earlier, the feeling of home is where we can be our real natural selves. This statement is true for our pet rat buddies as well. Create an environment where these rats feel at home. A rat-proof room will give them much freedom to be themselves and feel free just as they would feel like in the wild. 

I hope by now, you have understood the importance of leaving your fancy pet rat free to run and play around in the house. Following the necessary steps mentioned above, would help you to get away with all your confusion. However, do not forget to keep a close eye, during the playing hours of your rats to further avoid any possible mishaps. Happy Rat Parenting!