Meet Evee!

Rattie friend found! 

Evee is just a baby rattie at 7wks old.  So tiny!

Ended up turning to craigslist in my search to find Penelope a friend.  Surprisingly there's not a lot out there in rescue right now, at least if you only want 1 rat.

She's a brave little girl.  No issues with Zumi shoving her face in her cage and very quick to explore her surroundings.  Already has ventured further than Penelope has!

Introductions to Penelope is not going as smoothly as I hoped.  Initially Penelope was afraid when I put the 2 together in a large neutral cage.  Evee had no problems and tried following her around.  After their 3rd short meeting together Penelope started to get braver, but still nervous enough that she started to go after Evee.  I don't know too much about rat body language so I can't really judge how serious.  But it seems mostly bullying type behavior rather than outright aggression.  Evee is a little nervous now.  So I've settled in to having the girls in their separate cages for awhile now.

I needed to get Evee out of the tiny carrier she had been living in, but my large 2nd cage has 1in spaced bars that Evee can easily slip out of.  Actually Evee spent her first night in that cage with duct taped screen all over the side that I foolishly thought would hold.  I woke up the next morning and panicked when I saw some of the screen down and couldn't find Evee!  After quite a bit of searching Evee was eventually found huddled in the corner of the cage next to the litter box.  Thankfully she was still a little nervous as we had her less than 12 hours!  But thus Penelope is now moved to cage #2 and Evee gets the main cage with the 1/2in bars.

I am hoping that with a little more time Penelope will relax and accept her new little sister.  I have done many slow ferret introductions over the years, but never rat introductions.  With the ferrets it usually took 3-7 days before I felt comfortable housing the newbie with the existing clan.  Fingers crossed it won't take too long for these two!