Introducing Pocket

At last!

Poor Pocket's been waiting for his blog introduction for a couple of weeks now but I kept on putting it off. I feel bad as though he's been sort of forgotten. Trust me, though, you cannot forget Pocket.

He's my Pocket-rat (quite literally, the very first time we got him out he climbed into Mr Click's pocket and took an extended nap), he's Pocky Rat, my Big Squish, and the Wet Noodle Rat.

He's a gorgeous little Himalayan marked rat. When we first got him he had the faintest little grey marks on his nose and bum which are fully dark grey now. His nose markings stretch up his face towards his eyes and forehead, like he's wearing a little mask.

It's less noticeable now that he's grown but one of his eyes is actually slightly smaller than the other. I did a bit of research when we got him and it can be a common defect (for want of a better word) in dumbo rats (Pocket's a dumbo cutie). It's actually caused because his eye socket on one side is smaller so the eye there is smaller too. He's the only one of the four with pink eyes too, so his eyesight isn't great. I think that's why he's less inclined to jump than his brothers.

I'm fairly certain he was the first ratty to come out of the cage when we picked up the boys and he's been a 'people rat' ever since. He's the one who will come up to the front of the cage to talk to us, he wants attention all the time and would be perfectly happy to snuggle up next to us on the sofa or bed all day if we were to let him.

That photo above is from the day after we got him, when Pocket climbed out onto my lap, curled up on my arm and fell asleep. He was totally zonked out. It's hard work being this cute!

Pocket and Fezziwig are sort of polar opposites in our Mischief. Where Fezziwig is a muscular chunk, Pocket is a squishy noodle. The other boys have some muscle to them which goes sort of rigid when you pick them up; Pocket, on the other hand, sort of sags. He's a floppy rat who is perfectly happy to be picked up.

For the longest time he would climb when we moved them into the big cage. He very rarely gets into the hammock with his brothers (it's a notable occasion when he does and whoever spots him in there has to call the other to come and see, it's that unusual). We have a shredder bin in the bottom of the cage which is Pocket's bedroom. He took almost a week before he would venture up to the first shelf (though he did climb up the bars on the first day, he just didn't actually go anywhere) after we first moved them in to the grown up rat cage.

Now that he's three months old, he's actually one of our biggest boys. He's as big as Fez and I can see him getting even bigger still. He's sort of the oddball of our Mischief. He often snuggles up to Dodger and he regularly plays games of chase with Jingle. You'd think they hate one another from the way that they squeak and flip one another, but it's actually all one big game for them.

He's a tricky rat to get a good photo of though. For one thing, he's still in that speedy young rat phase (one minute he's got his nose in Mr Click's ear, the next he's dashing across the bathroom floor, the next he's pouncing on one of his brothers, the next he's heading back up onto Mr Click's shoulder). Plus he's which which means the flash tends to blow out many photos of him. But I'm gradually filling up my Instagram with photos of Pocket sleeping in all his weird and wonderful ways:

 

He definitely keeps us entertained!