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Offbeat Homie and frequent contributor Allison just turned a thrift store hutch into a house for her rats! I think this is genius, and so do her adorable pet rats. I wish I had thought of this idea for our sweet little Ratchops, may she rest in peace. But if YOU have pet rats, you’ll want to check out this veritable rat palace.
To see the complete make-over story, with tips on how you can make this deluxe rat house yourself, you’ll have to head over to the Mod Mishief blog
If you want to read up on keeping rats as pets (which I highly recommend!), head over to this Offbeat Home post.
Have YOU made an awesome DIY project for your pets? Or do you have an unusual pet? We want to hear about it!
This is the most awesome thing ever! I love rats as pets, they are by far the calmest of the rodents we ever had. This hutch house makes me think of rats as a sophisticated adult pet!
“they are by far the calmest of rodents”
Delightful.
Ahhhhhhhh this is adorable! :3 I LOVE rats; I loved when I worked at a vet clinic, my boss was terrified of them so I got to handle all the ones who came in. Unfortunately, most of the Brits I’ve met, including my boy, seem to go “Ewwww” when they come up (haven’t gotten over the plague, I guess ;]).
I did one of these cages for our bearded dragon.
I loved having rats. Rats may be in my future again. If so, there’s definitely one of those hutches too. It’s pretty awesome.
Wow, what a great idea, it looks so stylish! I wonder if this idea would be adaptable for a play area for our lazy cat…
I love this idea! I have never had rats but had hamsters and they would have loved it too. I just would have adapted it for smaller sized rodents. For that matter larger animals like chinchillas would probably love it too!
I’ve owned rats for many years, and I’ve seen these things on blogs before, and have always been curious about how they keep them clean. Mine are such piss-monsters, requiring frequent cage hose-downs, I’ve been skeptical about how easy it is to clean these things and keep them non-gross. They used countertop coating, I’d be interested to hear how well something like this kept up a couple years later. Maybe it’s males versus females, I don’t know, I’ve always had males. Anyone had one of these things long-term? Cleaning/prep tips?
I was just wondering this myself…I too have males and have always stuck to metal cages for this very reason. But so happy to see a rat post on here! I adore them and actually made rat cake toppers for our wedding in celebration of our beloved pets.
Bucks are definitely more piss-y than does. I’ve had both (I’ve had 26 rats in the last decade) and my current three girlies make little to no smell. It’s the boys’ hormones that make them pissmonsters. 🙂
I love “Rats” too,i use lemon juice,its affordable & nutralizes the smell…then a few drops of vanilla essence on occasion….
Awwwwww! This makes me miss my babies.
We converted a thrift store media cabinet into a terrarium for our four snakes. Which they broke out of three months later, led by the one called Bitey Biterton. That was a fun day.
I’m sure it would’ve been an elegant and successful solution if Bitey weren’t such an intelligent and unrelenting bastard.
I love this! I tried making a souped up rat cage for my two rats, Chicken & Waffles by converting a bookcase. I can’t remember the website I used, but they advised making the back out of pegboard. Don’t do that. Pegboard is cardboard, and guess what? Rats will chew a ginormous hole in it. Stainless steel backsplash, ah. Wish I had thought of that. I also used hardware cloth, which is a pain if you don’t have a some special crimper tool for the seams. So mine didn’t turn out so well and I ended up scrapping it altogether because the girls hated it anyway (they loved the smaller cage, guess they like to be cozy). Anyhow, I’m glad to see a better example, and maybe I’ll try it again some day. Thanks for sharing in the rattie love!!
want want want! I love this idea <3
I have an Indian Ringneck Parakeet and a slightly modified version of this would be an awesome playhouse for her!
I just did this with an old record player hutch that didn’t work anymore for my bunny!
This makes me miss having pet rats! My two greyhounds are high prey, though, so I won’t be going back to rats anytime soon:(
But people are right to worry about the pee smell being a problem with the wood. I did a lot of research on cages (and went through 4 different cages throughout my time with my 8 girls), and anything with either wood or plastic will absorb the smell. Wood obviously will absorb the smell a lot quicker than plastic, too. The only way this would really be doable is if all of them were actually trained to pee in a litter box… which is not an easy task. All of my rats were able to learn to poop in a litter box, but I never was able to teach them to pee in there!
Wonder if this would work for my pet rabbit when he’s not running around the house… hm! Off to research!
I wanted to know if rat palace,is it for sale if so how much and were can they be viewed
I have a couple of concerns. First, cleaning (which someone else mentioned). Second, chewing. Pretty sure my rats would make short work of any wooden enclosure we put them in.